arke/README.md

# python monitoring client
arke is a dumb python monitoring client i am currently working on to monitor http status and docker container runtime.

### http status:
- monitor znc server http status
- monitor pleroma server http status

### docker runtime:
- slackbot

## structure
- runtime file
- vars file that points the client at my servers

## TODO
- [X] Fix loading json from file
  - alright see "json loading" heading in this file.
- [X] Fix state comparison and post to only post the item that has changed since last run
  - i thought I mostly had this fixed but i'm still running into issues.
  - requires some additional digging.
- [X] update this readme.

## json loading
confused here. in python, a dict is the key/value store that is used to map to json. all my functions return a dict:

``` python
def monitor_HttpTargets(monitoringtargets):
    responseTable = {}
	...
    return responseTable


def monitor_DomainExpiry(targets):
    responseTable = {}
	...
    return responseTable


def monitor_TlsExpiry(targets):
    responseTable = {}
	...
    return responseTable
```

Ok so that part's straight forward. Then, i combine all of them into a single keyed dict, so I have a dict of dicts:


``` python
    datastore = {}
    
    datastore['http'] = monitor_HttpTargets(arkevars.httpTargets)
    datastore['certs'] = monitor_TlsExpiry(arkevars.tlsTargets)
    datastore['whois'] = monitor_DomainExpiry(arkevars.domains_to_check)

```
OK again, straight forward. Here's where shit gets less obvious to me. I need to convert this variable containing a dict into a json object in a file. I do this like so:

```python
# write new results to file
with open(this_round_file, "a+", encoding="utf-8") as outfile:
	json.dump(datastore, outfile, ensure_ascii=False, sort_keys=True)
```

ok, so crafting the json object seems to make sense, and seems to be pretty straight forward. What about reading the 'json' object? WELL THEREIN LIES THE TALE MY GOOD BITCH

```python
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "arke.py", line 114, in <module>
    json_data = json.load(json_File)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/json/__init__.py", line 293, in load
    return loads(fp.read(),
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/json/__init__.py", line 357, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/json/decoder.py", line 340, in decode
    raise JSONDecodeError("Extra data", s, end)
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Extra data: line 1 column 133 (char 132)
```

this is where I get. loading that file doesn't work. Which seems to suggest that how I'm crafting the json string written to the file with `json.dump` is problematic! But I haven't figured out /why/ ugh.

### fixed
oh my god i wasn't cleaning up the file after last run so previous run charactes was fucking up the file!!! aaaah!