Why would you want to implement a health-check endpoint in your application?

Implementing a health-check endpoint in an application is essential for allowing real-time monitoring of the application's health. This endpoint provides a way for monitoring tools and services to query the application's status, which can include checks on various components like databases, external services, and the application itself.

By using this mechanism, developers and operations teams can quickly determine if the application is operating as intended or if there are issues that need to be addressed. This is particularly important in production environments, where downtime can significantly affect user experience and business operations. Continuous health checks can enable proactive measures, such as automatically restarting services or alerting administrators when problems are detected.

In contrast, other options present different objectives that are not directly related to the purpose of a health-check endpoint. While logging application errors and managing user sessions can contribute to overall application stability and performance, they do not primarily focus on monitoring application health in real-time like a dedicated health-check endpoint does.