What is a Webhook?

by Jason Gilmore • October 26, 2020

Webhooks

A webhook provides a decoupled means for an application to provide real-time updates to other applications. A great example of webhook integration is Slack, which can automate the publication of messages to channels and users. Configured inside the Slack administration panel, a Slack webhook is identified by a unique URL, such as https://hooks.slack.com/services/12345/qwert/. When somebody starts a hosted DreamFactory trial at https://genie.dreamfactory.com, a message is published to one of our Slack channels. This is because the trial processing code associated with the genie website contacts the channel's associated webhook, sending relevant details about the new trial. The webhook's logic receives this information and publishes it to our internal #deployments-genie channel.



Creating Webhooks with DreamFactory

Using DreamFactory's scripted services connector, it's easy to create webhooks to satisfy a wide variety of use cases. In addition to centralizing the logic used to power the webhooks, DreamFactory offers several key integrations to assist with webhook development. Some examples include:

  • Adding a new customer to your company newsletter. Imagine a new customer has just completed a purchase through your product website. Upon order completion, the order processing code triggers a DreamFactory-hosted webhook which adds the customer's email address to an email campaign hosted inside Autopilot or Mailchimp. This integration can be quickly completed thanks to DreamFactory's support for third-party libraries such as this OSS Mailchimp library.
  • Processing Stripe events. The Stripe payment processor can contact a webhook to automate handling of issues such as the inability to renew a subscription due to expiration of the credit card on file. In addition to emailing the subscriber, Stripe can contact your webhook for this event which might additionally send your sales team an e-mail or post a message to Slack. Using DreamFactory's Elastic Stack integration, you can create a real-time dashboard highlighting Stripe event frequency.
  • Posting customer details to Salesforce. Many companies prefer to centralize customer information and relevant updates within an enterprise CRM solution such as Pipedrive or Salesforce. Using DreamFactory's Salesforce connector, a series of webhooks can quickly be created to coordinate synchronizing customer-related information originating from myriad third-party applications.

Beyond the security-related advantages of centralizing your organization webhooks within a single platform, DreamFactory's API connectors allow you to quickly build webhooks capable of talking to Salesforce, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, and more.