I want to write an ASP.NET Web API endpoint that allows clients to check if database is running.
The method below is check if database is up by establishing a connection and running a dummy sql statement. If exception is thrown, the database is down. Thus, it always return true when it is up.
public interface IDatabaseHealthStatus {
bool IsDatabaseUp();
}
public class DatabaseHealthStatus :IDatabaseHealthStatus {
public bool IsDatabaseUp(){
using(var con = new SqlConnection(connectionString)
using(var cmd= new SqlCommand("SELECT 1", con)
{
con.Open();
cmd.ExecuteReader();
return true; //always returns true, unless exception throws
}
} }
}
}
The calling method looks like below.
API controller action method:
[HttpGet]
public IHttpActionResult IsDatabaseUp(){
databaseHealthStatus.IsDatabaseUp(); //return value is ignored. Exception is handled by global exception handler, if any
return OK();
}
Questions:
1: IsDatabaseUp() returns boolean type, but it always returns true (not false), unless it throws exception, which might be confusing (that is, bool, only returns true, and exception). I don't want to catch exception within the method, and return false. Because I want global exception handler to handle it and log the exception. This way it makes the code cleaner by reducing try/catch block. But in this case, unless comment is put for the method, it might be confusing.
Is this the best way to return the result? What do you think?