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Monitor your first API

What you'll achieve​

By the end of this tutorial you will have a running API monitor that calls a real endpoint on a schedule, and you will be able to find and read its results, including the pass/fail status, latency breakdown, and response details.

Before you start​

  • An APIContext account: free tier is fine. Sign up at client.apimetrics.io
  • An API endpoint to test. This tutorial uses https://httpbin.org/get: a public, always-on endpoint that returns a simple JSON response with no authentication required.

Step 1: Create a project​

Everything in APIContext lives inside a Project. When you log in you land on the Collections page, which lists all your projects grouped by organization.

  1. In the top bar, open the Organization picker and select your organization (also labeled Collection in some parts of the UI: they refer to the same entity).
  2. Click the Project picker and choose + Add Project.
  3. Give your project a name (for example, My First Monitor) and save it.
  4. The app will open your new project at Project Overview (/home/).

Step 2: Add a monitor​

A monitor is a configured API request that APIContext runs on your behalf. The Monitors list is found under Configure Monitoring in the left sidebar.

  1. In the left sidebar, under Configure Monitoring, click Monitors.
    The page heading reads Monitors and lists all monitors defined in this project.
  2. Click + Add New API Call.
    The Create New API Call panel opens.
  3. Fill in the fields:
    • Method: leave it set to GET (the default).
    • URL: enter https://httpbin.org/get.
    • Name: enter something descriptive, for example httpbin GET.
  4. Leave all other fields at their defaults. No authentication is needed for this endpoint.
  5. Click Create and Edit.
    The monitor is created and opens in the monitor edit form. (Create Monitor creates it without opening it.)

Your monitor now appears in the Monitors list.

Step 3: Run it once to verify​

Before putting the monitor on a schedule, confirm it works with a manual run.

  1. On the monitor edit form (or from the Monitors list, open the monitor and go to its Edit tab), locate the Run Monitor Now button in the right rail.
  2. Click Run Monitor Now.
    APIContext sends the request from a remote Node. There will be a short delay, typically a few seconds, while the call travels to the Node and back.
  3. The right rail updates to show Last result: you should see Passed, HTTP 200, and a latency value.

If the result shows a failure, double-check the URL for typos. https://httpbin.org/get should always return HTTP 200.

Step 4: Add the monitor to a schedule​

A manual run is a one-off check. To make this a true monitor, something that runs automatically and continuously, you need to add it to a Schedule.

  1. In the left sidebar, under Configure Monitoring, click Schedules.
  2. Click + New Schedule.
    A modal opens with tabs Edit Schedule and Node Locations.
  3. On the Edit Schedule tab, fill in:
    • Name: for example, Every 5 minutes – worldwide.
    • Frequency: select 12 per hour (once every 5 minutes) (the highest frequency on the free tier).
    • Node Selection: leave it set to Worldwide.
  4. Click Save changes.
  5. The new schedule card appears in the Schedules list. Click the Scheduled Monitors count on the card to open the monitors dialog. In the Add to Schedule: row, choose your httpbin GET monitor from the Select Monitor or Workflow picker and click Add.

Your monitor is now running. Results will accumulate every five minutes.

Step 5: Read your first results​

Results appear in two places: on the monitor itself, and in the project-wide results view.

On the monitor​

  1. In the left sidebar, click Monitors.
  2. Click the row for httpbin GET to expand it, then open the Results tab (/tests/test/<id>/results).
  3. Each row is one execution. The columns show:
    • Start time: when the call was made.
    • Result Class: Passed, Warning, or Failed.
    • HTTP status: should be 200.
    • Total time: end-to-end response time in milliseconds.
  4. Click a row to open the full result detail. You will see:
    • A call result summary (pass/fail, HTTP code, trigger reason).
    • Call duration breakdown: DNS lookup, TCP connect, processing time, and total time.
    • The request that was sent and the response that came back, including the response body.

Project-wide​

To see results across all monitors in the project:

  1. In the left sidebar, under INVESTIGATE, click All Call Results.
    The page is titled Results / Monitor Results and shows every request made in this project.
  2. Use the Result category filter to narrow to Passed or Failed runs, and the Location filter to see results from a specific node.

Project Overview summary​

On the Project Overview page (/home/), the Monitors in Schedules table shows a live summary row for your monitor with columns Quality, Availability %, Slow %, and Avg. Total latency. After a few runs these numbers will populate and give you an at-a-glance health view.

What's next?​

You have a working monitor running on a schedule. Here are the natural next steps:

Understand what you just built

Go deeper on monitoring

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