Code monitors allow you to keep track of and get notified about changes in your code. Some use cases for code monitors include getting notifications for potential secrets, anti-patterns, or common typos committed to your codebase.
Code monitors are made up of two main elements: Triggers and Actions.
A trigger is an event which causes execution of an action. Currently, code monitoring supports one kind of trigger: "When new search results are detected" for a particular search query. When creating a code monitor, users will be asked to specify a query as part of the trigger.
Sourcegraph will run the search query over every new commit for the searched repositories, and when new results for the query are detected, a trigger event is emitted. In response to the trigger event, any actions attached to the code monitor will be executed.
Query requirements
A query used in a "When new search results are detected" trigger must be a diff or commit search. In other words, the query must contain type:commit or type:diff. This allows Sourcegraph to detect new search results periodically.
An action is executed in response to a trigger event. Currently, code monitoring supports three different actions:
- Sending a notification email to the owner of the code monitor
- Beta Sending a Slack message to a preconfigured channel
- Beta Sending a webhook event to an endpoint of your choosing
To put it all together, a code monitor has a flow similar to the following:
A user creates a code monitor, which consists of:
- a name for the monitor
- a trigger, which consists of a search query to run periodically,
- and an action, which is sending an email, sending a Slack message, or sending a webhook event
Sourcegraph runs the query periodically over new commits. When new results are detected, a notification will be sent with the configured action. It will either contain a link to the search that provided new results, or if the "Include results" setting is enabled, it will include the result contents.