Changelog

This week, we introduced a suite of new WebSocket-focused tools to help developers test, debug, and optimise real-time connections more effectively.

🚀 New Tools

• WebSocket Playground
  Interactively connect to WebSocket servers, send/receive messages, and experiment in real time by writing your own WebSocket client code.

• WebSocket Close Frame Inspector
  Analyse close frames with detailed insights into status codes and reasons for disconnections.

• WebSocket Stability Checker
  Monitor connection reliability over time and detect unexpected drops or interruptions.

• WebSocket Latency Checker
  Measure round-trip latency to better understand real-time performance.

• WebSocket Stress Tester
  Simulate high-load scenarios to evaluate how your WebSocket server handles scale.

Next week, we are making the PieSocket self-hosted version free! You can simply run 

pie socket serve

to launch your own PieSocket server instance. Stay tuned!

 

This release brings first-class cron job support and introduces pie.json for PieApps— pie.json is a simple config file that gives you full control over deployments and scheduled tasks directly from your repo.

✨ What’s New

📄 pie.json configuration

You can now add a pie.json file to your repository root to configure your app without using the dashboard.
PieApp reads this file at the start of every deployment.

{
  "type": "frontend",
  "subtype": "nextjs",
  "crons": [
    {
      "schedule": "* * * * *",
      "command": "/usr/bin/php /app/artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1"
    }
  ]
}

Supported keys: type, subtype, crons: more coming soon.
See the Configuration docs for full details.

⏰ Cron jobs

Define scheduled tasks inside pie.json using the crons key.
Each cron includes a standard 5-part schedule and a shell command.

• 🔢 Up to 100 cron jobs per app
• ⚙️ Works across all app types (Laravel, WordPress, Node.js, custom PHP)
• 🔄 Changes apply after the next deployment

Crons are installed in your container at build time and run automatically.

🤖 Automatic app detection

PieApp now detects your app’s runtime and framework on every deploy—now minimal manual setup is needed.

It checks files like artisan, composer.json, wp-config.php, and package.json.

Detection priority:

1. pie.json (always overrides)
2. Laravel → artisan + composer.json
3. WordPress → wp-config.php
4. JS frameworks → package.json (Next.js, React, Vue, etc.)
5. Custom PHP → composer.json
6. Fallback → Frontend

📊 Cronjobs dashboard tab

A new Cronjobs tab in the PieApp dashboard shows all active cron jobs from your deployed pie.json.

• 👀 View all cron entries at a glance
• 📭 No pie.json or empty crons = no entries shown

🚦 How to upgrade

No changes needed for existing apps.

To use cron jobs or override app detection:
👉 Add a pie.json to your repo and redeploy.

See the Cronjob documentation for more details.

This week, we shipped a major upgrade to our online WebSocket client and the Chrome extension,  focusing on multi-connection testing, better debugging tools, and improved developer experience.

✨ New Features & Improvements

🔌 Multi-Connection Testing
Run up to 3 simultaneous WebSocket connections in single, dual, or triple panel layouts. Easily compare responses across different environments without switching tabs.

🌐 Supports ws:// and wss://
Full support for both secure (wss) and unsecured (ws) protocols. Works seamlessly with any WebSocket server.

🔄 Auto-Reconnect
Simulate real-world client behaviour with configurable auto-reconnect, including custom retry limits and intervals.

💓 Heartbeat / Ping Support
Keep connections alive using configurable heartbeat messages sent at regular intervals — ideal for testing server keep-alive logic.

🧠 Message History
Quickly navigate previously sent messages using keyboard shortcuts. No need to retype payloads during iterative testing.

🧾 JSON Pretty-Print
Incoming messages are automatically formatted for readability. Switch between raw and pretty-printed JSON views instantly.

🔍 Log Filtering & Search
Filter logs by type (sent, received, error, info) and perform real-time search across all messages.

📤 Export Logs
Download complete session logs as a timestamped .log file for sharing or debugging.

📊 Live Connection Stats
Monitor bytes sent/received, message count, and connection duration — all updated live.

🌙 Dark Mode
A smoother experience for long debugging sessions with built-in dark mode support.

Over the past week, we focused on making dashboards more accurate, faster, and more useful — along with adding powerful new tools for everyday development workflows.

Here’s everything we shipped this week 👇

📊 More Accurate Piemail Dashboard

We’ve improved the Piemail dashboard to give you a clearer and more reliable picture of your email performance.

You’ll now see:
More accurate counts for sent emails
Improved tracking of bounced emails

These updates ensure that your email analytics better reflect real-world delivery, helping you make smarter decisions.

⚡ Improved PieSocket Logs Dashboard

Monitoring real-time activity just got smoother.

The PieSocket logs dashboard now:

Loads new messages in the background
Provides a more seamless, real-time logging experience
Reduces interruptions while you’re inspecting logs

This means less waiting and more visibility when debugging or tracking events.

🧰 New Developer Tools

We’ve added four new tools to help you test and debug your infrastructure quickly:

Postgres Tester – Validate your PostgreSQL connections and queries
SMTP Tester – Test email sending configurations instantly
MongoDB Tester – Verify MongoDB connections and operations
MySQL Tester – Quickly test MySQL database connectivity

Explore all tools here:
👉 https://piehost.com/tools

These tools are designed to save time and eliminate guesswork when setting up services.

See you next Tuesday!

Best,
Pie.host Team
 

This week, we’ve officially rolled out our core product suite — something we’ve been building quietly behind the scenes:

• PieBox — Cloud Servers, made easy as pie
• PieMail — Transactional emails, made easy as pie
• PieCache — Redis, made easy as pie
• PieBucket — S3 storage, made easy as pie
• PieMongo — MongoDB, made easy as pie
• PieGres — PostgreSQL, made easy as pie

Along with PieSocket, PieApp, and PieDB, Pie.host is now a 9-product cloud ecosystem.

These launches form the foundation of what we’re building — a cohesive platform that gives you both the infrastructure and the tools to move faster, without complexity.

On the experience side, we’ve rolled out improvements to dark mode across the platform. It’s now cleaner, more consistent, and easier on the eyes during long sessions.

With the suite now complete, our focus shifts to refining and improving existing products in the coming weeks. Over the coming weeks, expect continuous improvements across the existing ecosystem — from performance upgrades to UX refinements, and deeper integrations between all Pie.host products.

Stay tuned. ⚡

Best regards,
Pie.host Team