title: Lambda function to make simple HTTP request
body: <p>I want to use AWS lambda to make a cronjob-style HTTP request. Unfortunately I don't know Python.</p>
  
  <p>I found they had a "Canary" function which seems to be similar to what I want. How do I simplify this to simply make the HTTP request? I just need to trigger a PHP file.</p>
  
  <pre><code>from __future__ import print_function
  
  from datetime import datetime
  from urllib2 import urlopen
  
  SITE = 'https://www.amazon.com/'  # URL of the site to check
  EXPECTED = 'Online Shopping'  # String expected to be on the page
  
  
  def validate(res):
      '''Return False to trigger the canary
  
      Currently this simply checks whether the EXPECTED string is present.
      However, you could modify this to perform any number of arbitrary
      checks on the contents of SITE.
      '''
      return EXPECTED in res
  
  
  def lambda_handler(event, context):
      print('Checking {} at {}...'.format(SITE, event['time']))
      try:
          if not validate(urlopen(SITE).read()):
              raise Exception('Validation failed')
      except:
          print('Check failed!')
          raise
      else:
          print('Check passed!')
          return event['time']
      finally:
          print('Check complete at {}'.format(str(datetime.now())))
  </code></pre>