Posted by stan on October 13th, 2009
Earlier today we promoted the 1.6 version of the WatchMouse API to ’stable’. Next to some minor fixes, the new API now fully supports IPv6 and UTF-8.
The WatchMouse API enables developers to tie in features of the WatchMouse monitoring service in their own application or website. Using the API you can access the data and functions of the WatchMouse services.
Some example uses of the API:
- Perform a check of your site from one of the worldwide monitoring stations of WatchMouse
- Access your WatchMouse account and set up, activate, modify, or remove site monitoring rules
- Schedule a Vulnerability Scan for your server
- Send an SMS from one of the many SMS gateways of WatchMouse
- Perform a traceroute from one of these stations to an IP address of your choice. The just-trace site was build using these services.
- Find where a certain host is located (IP to location)
- Compute how much 10 Euro is in US Dollars.
- …
IPv6 support
IPv6 is an important feature in this release, and it actually took more than just the API to fully support it. We upgraded monitoring stations, the core monitoring software, our website, and the databases in our back-end systems to make it all work. And let’s not forget the hosting providers for our 40+ stations world wide. But that’s a story worthy of a full post coming soon 
For most API calls you will need a WatchMouse account (or an account with one of our partners) and the number of calls is rate-limited on hourly or daily basis, but some calls can be used anonymously too. See the Access to the API chapter for details.
Your mashup here
Already a number of mash-ups were created, like the Just-ping site and the Down-or-Not site, and we will see a number of other applications down the road. If you use our API, just let us know in a comment below, and don’t forget to list it as a mash-up at Programmable web!
For documentation, please read on here:
- http://apidoc.watchmouse.com/ for general information on the API, its use, the access methods and limits, error codes and more.
- http://api.watchmouse.com/ for detailed information on each call, its parameters and results, and a sandbox for each call.
Hope to see a thousand applications bloom!
Stan P. van de Burgt
