README

Monitor Laravel scheduled tasks and cron jobs, and get alerted the moment one silently stops running. The official PingArk package does the plumbing for you: each task pings when it starts and when it finishes, and a failure sends the exit code and the actual exception along with it, so you know why a job broke, not just that a ping is late.

PingArk is a monitoring service for cron jobs and scheduled tasks. A job sends an outbound ping when it runs. If the ping does not arrive on schedule, plus a grace period you choose, PingArk alerts you. This package is the quickest way to wire that up in a Laravel application, though PingArk works with any job in any language over a plain HTTP request. A free account covers 20 checks with no card required.

• Full guide
• Ping API reference
• Management API reference

Contents

• What you get
• Requirements
• Install
• Configure
• Quick start: watch a scheduled task
• Register your whole schedule
• Send signals by hand
  • Capture an exception
  • Report an exit code
  • Log a progress event
• Create and manage checks from code
• How it stays out of your way

What you get

• A one-line ->pingArk() you chain onto any scheduled task.
• Automatic start, success, and failure pings around every run, so PingArk can measure how long a task takes and show you the error when one fails.
• A PingArk facade to send signals by hand from inside a job, including progress notes and captured exceptions.
• A pingark:sync command that registers your whole schedule as checks in one go.
• A small management API client for creating and configuring checks from code.
• A promise that monitoring never breaks the job it is watching. Every ping has a short timeout and swallows its own errors.

Requirements

• PHP 8.3 or newer
• Laravel 12 or 13

Installation

composer require pingark/pingark-laravel

Publish the config file if you want to change any defaults (optional):

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=pingark-config

Configuration

Add your project ping key to .env. You will find it in PingArk under your project's settings.

PINGARK_PING_KEY=your-project-ping-key

# Optional. Only needed for pingark:sync and the management API client.
PINGARK_API_KEY=your-read-write-api-key

That is all most applications need. The full set of options lives in config/pingark.php:

Quick start: watch a scheduled task

Chain ->pingArk() onto any task in your schedule:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schedule;

Schedule::command('backup:run')->dailyAt('02:00')->pingArk();

That is the whole integration. On each run the plugin sends a start ping before the task, a success ping after it finishes, and a failure ping (with the captured output, and the command's real exit code) if it fails. PingArk measures the run duration for you from the start and finish pings.

The check slug is derived from the task name, so backup:run pings a check named backuprun. When you would rather choose the slug yourself, pass it to pingArk(). The rest of this guide follows one example job, a nightly order import on the check nightly-import:

Schedule::command('import:orders')->dailyAt('02:00')->pingArk('nightly-import');

Whichever slug you use must match the check in PingArk. Create it in the dashboard, or let pingark:sync create it for you.

Register your whole schedule

Rather than creating each check by hand, let the plugin mirror your entire schedule into PingArk:

php artisan pingark:sync

It creates one check per scheduled task, using the task's cron expression and timezone, and skips any check that already exists, so it is safe to run again after you add new tasks. This needs PINGARK_API_KEY set to a read-write key.

Preview the changes first with --dry-run:

php artisan pingark:sync --dry-run

Find checks that no longer map to a scheduled task with --prune. This only reports them. It never deletes anything, so a check you still want is never removed behind your back:

php artisan pingark:sync --prune

Send signals by hand

Sometimes you want to signal PingArk from inside a job rather than around a scheduled command. The PingArk facade gives you one method per signal.

use PingArk\Laravel\Facades\PingArk;

PingArk::start('nightly-import');   // records a start time so duration can be measured
PingArk::success('nightly-import'); // job finished, re-arms the check
PingArk::fail('nightly-import');    // job failed, sends the check down

Capture an exception on failure

Pass the caught exception to fail() and its class, message, and stack trace are attached to the failure, so you can see what went wrong right on the PingArk timeline.

use PingArk\Laravel\Facades\PingArk;

try {
    $this->runImport();
    PingArk::success('nightly-import');
} catch (\Throwable $e) {
    PingArk::fail('nightly-import', $e);
    throw $e;
}

Report an exit code

If you already have a process exit status, send it directly. Zero counts as success and any non-zero value counts as a failure, and the raw code is recorded either way.

PingArk::exitCode('nightly-import', 137); // 137 is an out-of-memory kill

Log a progress event

A log event records a note on the timeline without changing the check's state. It never arms, recovers, or alerts. Use it for progress inside a long job.

PingArk::log('nightly-import', 'processed 5,000 of 20,000 rows');

Create and manage checks from code

For setup scripts and tooling, PingArk::api() gives you a small client for the management API. It needs a read-write PINGARK_API_KEY. Unlike the ping signals, the client throws on an error, because a failed setup call is something you want to know about.

use PingArk\Laravel\Facades\PingArk;

$check = PingArk::api()->createCheck([
    'name' => 'Nightly import',
    'slug' => 'nightly-import',
    'schedule_type' => 'simple',
    'period' => 86400,   // expected every 24 hours
    'grace' => 3600,     // allow an hour late before alerting
    'timezone' => 'UTC',
]);

PingArk::api()->pause($check['id']);
PingArk::api()->resume($check['id']);

$pings = PingArk::api()->pings($check['id']);
$flips = PingArk::api()->flips($check['id']);
$channels = PingArk::api()->channels();

How it stays out of your way

Monitoring should never be the reason a job fails. Every ping this package sends has a short timeout and swallows its own errors, and it never retries. If PingArk is unreachable, your job runs exactly as it would without the package, and the next scheduled run pings again. When PingArk is disabled or the ping key is missing, the signals are a silent no-op.

The pingark:sync command and the PingArk::api() client are the exception. They are setup tools, not part of a running job, so they surface errors rather than hiding them. When pingark:sync runs without an API key it also points you at creating a free account, and a successful sync prints the dashboard URL where your new checks live.

Testing

composer test

Documentation

The full guide, with more examples, lives at pingark.com/docs/laravel-plugin.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Before opening a pull request, please run the test suite (composer test), format with Laravel Pint (composer lint), and run the static analysis (composer analyse). The CI workflow runs all three on every push.

License

Released under the MIT License. Copyright © 2026 Virtueplanet Services LLP. See LICENSE for details.