Get a notification when your OCaml code is done executing

These days we can use OCaml for almost anything, be it a simple function, a complex algorithm, or anything that comes to mind. Usually, what we want OCaml to do happens very quickly, and we don't even have to wait for it to finish.

Long-running OCaml tasks are a problem

However, sometimes you are writing a OCaml code, process, or job that may take a long time to run. For example, you may decide to crawl a website or run a long-running parsing algorithm.

I'm sure almost every developer has, at some point, written a OCaml code that takes a long time to run. They then had to continuously check the task, wait for it to finish running, and ensure the OCaml code was working as expected. As you can see, this gets tedious very quickly and wastes time and effort.

Push notifications fix this problem

One common way to solve this is to track the status of our OCaml code and send a push notification when the code is done running or when it fails. By doing so, we can leave and forget about the long-running OCaml code and focus on the important things we need to do, and by the time something happens, we will instantly get a push notification to let us know.

To do so, we can use LogSnag to track the status of our OCaml code. LogSnag is a simple, easy-to-use, robust event tracking and notification system that lets you track your OCaml code and send push notifications when something happens.

Let's walk you through setting up and using LogSnag to track the status of our OCaml code.

Setting up LogSnag

Sign up for a free LogSnag account.
Create your first project from the dashboard.
Head to settings and copy your API token.

OCaml code snippets

Now that we have our account and project setup, we can copy the following code snippet, update the values with your information, and paste it into your code.

Using OCaml with Cohttp

open Lwt
open Cohttp
open Cohttp_lwt_unix

let postData = ref "{\"project\":\"my-project\",\"channel\":\"crawler\",\"event\":\"Crawling is complete\",\"description\":\"Successfully crawled 1,230 pages.\",\"icon\":\"🔥\",\"notify\":true}";;

let reqBody = 
  let uri = Uri.of_string "https://api.logsnag.com/v1/log" in
  let headers = Header.init ()
    |> fun h -> Header.add h "Content-Type" "application/json"
    |> fun h -> Header.add h "Authorization" "Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN"
  in
  let body = Cohttp_lwt.Body.of_string !postData in

  Client.call ~headers ~body `POST uri >>= fun (_resp, body) ->
  body |> Cohttp_lwt.Body.to_string >|= fun body -> body

let () =
  let respBody = Lwt_main.run reqBody in
  print_endline (respBody)

OCaml integration details

LogSnag provides several other features that can be used to simplify your job as a developer. For example, suppose you're working with a team. In that case, you can also add the rest of your team to your LogSnag project and allow them to see the status of your OCaml code and receive push notifications when something important happens.

LogSang also keeps track of your previous events, so you can see what has happened in the past and search through previous events. We found this to be very powerful when we are working on larger projects and need to see what has happened in the past.

In addition, LogSnag allows you to create simple dashboards, charts, and graphs that give you more insight into your code and the events you track.

Other use-cases for LogSnag

View all common use-cases with OCaml