Webhooks

In this guide, we will look at how to register and consume webhooks to integrate your app with Protocol. With webhooks, your app can know when something happens in Protocol, such as someone sending a message or adding a contact.

Registering webhooks

To register a new webhook, you need to have a URL in your app that Protocol can call. You can configure a new webhook from the Protocol dashboard under API settings. Give your webhook a name, pick the events you want to listen for, and add your URL.

Now, whenever something of interest happens in your app, a webhook is fired off by Protocol. In the next section, we'll look at how to consume webhooks.

Consuming webhooks

When your app receives a webhook request from Protocol, check the type attribute to see what event caused it. The first part of the event type will tell you the payload type, e.g., a conversation, message, etc.

{
  "id": "a056V7R7NmNRjl70",
  "type": "conversation.updated",
  "payload": {
    "id": "WAz8eIbvDR60rouK"
    // ...
  }
}

In the example above, a conversation was updated, and the payload type is a conversation.

Event types

{
  "id": "a056V7R7NmNRjl70",
  "type": "message.updated",
  "payload": {
    "id": "SIuAFUNKdSYHZF2w",
    "conversation_id": "xgQQXg3hrtjh7AvZ",
    "contact": {
      "id": "WAz8eIbvDR60rouK",
      "username": "KevinMcCallister",
      "phone_number": "1-800-759-3000",
      "avatar_url": "https://assets.protocol.chat/avatars/kevin.jpg",
      "last_active_at": 705103200,
      "created_at": 692233200
    },
    "message": "I’m traveling with my dad. He’s at a meeting. I hate meetings.",
    "reactions": [],
    "attachments": [],
    "read_at": 705103200,
    "created_at": 692233200,
    "updated_at": 692233200
  }
}

Security

To know for sure that a webhook was, in fact, sent by Protocol instead of a malicious actor, you can verify the request signature. Each webhook request contains a header named x-protocol-signature, and you can verify this signature by using your secret webhook key. The signature is an HMAC hash of the request payload hashed using your secret key. Here is an example of how to verify the signature in your app:

const signature = req.headers['x-protocol-signature']
const hash = crypto.createHmac('sha256', secret).update(payload).digest('hex')

if (hash === signature) {
  // Request is verified
} else {
  // Request could not be verified
}

If your generated signature matches the x-protocol-signature header, you can be sure that the request was truly coming from Protocol. It's essential to keep your secret webhook key safe — otherwise, you can no longer be sure that a given webhook was sent by Protocol. Don't commit your secret webhook key to GitHub!