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Hasty Treat - Webhooks

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about webhooks — one of those concepts that seems a lot scarier than it actually is.

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Show Notes

03:42 - What are webhooks?

  • User-defined HTTP callbacks
  • When something happens, ping this URL with this data
  • Examples:
    • When something sells, ping this URL
    • When someone reverses a charge, lock their account
    • Trigger a build of the website when the content changes
    • Then someone buys a shirt, generate a shipping label and save it to the DB

07:57 - Sending End

  • Can be a great way to hook two services together

09:13 - Receiving End

  • Often you will be the one that accepts the webhook ping
  • In this case, you set up an endpoint

11:00 - Payloads

  • Almost all will send a JSON body that you parse out
  • The method send is variable

11:51 - Auth

  • On the receiving end of a webhook, you often get a token which you can then ping the service with. It will tell you if that request was legit or not.
  • On the sending end, you can often set up headers with auth - same with the method
  • Can be a replacement for a serverless function

13:18 - Testing webhooks

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