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

• Can be a pain in the ass
• ngrok - expose locally
• localtunnel
• Insomnia
• Postman
• Stripe has a great VS code extension
• Snipcart has an awesome dashboard
  • Will also tell you when one failed
• webhook.site
• https://expose.dev/
• IFTTT
• Zapier

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