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title, intro, redirect_from, versions, topics
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| Creating webhooks | Learn to build a webhook, choosing the events your webhook will listen for on {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom %} and how to set up a server to receive and manage the webhook payload. |
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Now that we understand the basics of webhooks, let's go through the process of building out our own webhook-powered integration. In this tutorial, we'll create a repository webhook that will be responsible for listing out how popular our repository is, based on the number of issues it receives per day.
Creating a webhook is a two-step process. You'll first need to set up what events you webhook should listen to. After that, you'll set up your server to receive and manage the payload.
{% data reusables.webhooks.webhooks-rest-api-links %}
Exposing localhost to the internet
For the purposes of this tutorial, we're going to use a local server to receive webhook events from {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom %}.
First of all, we need to expose our local development environment to the internet so {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom %} can deliver events. We'll use ngrok to do this.
{% ifversion cli-webhook-forwarding %} {% note %}
Note: Alternatively, you can use webhook forwarding to set up your local environment to receive webhooks. For more information, see "Receiving webhooks with the GitHub CLI."
{% endnote %} {% endif %}
ngrok is available, free of charge, for all major operating systems. For more information, see the ngrok download page.
After installing ngrok, you can expose your localhost by running ./ngrok http 4567 on the command line. 4567 is the port number on which our server will listen for messages. You should see a line that looks something like this:
$ Forwarding http://7e9ea9dc.ngrok.io -> 127.0.0.1:4567
Make a note of the *.ngrok.io URL. We'll use it to set up our webhook.
Setting up a webhook
You can install webhooks on an organization or on a specific repository.
To set up a webhook, go to the settings page of your repository or organization. From there, click Webhooks, then Add webhook.
Alternatively, you can choose to build and manage a webhook through the Webhooks API.
Webhooks require a few configuration options before you can make use of them. We'll go through each of these settings below.
Payload URL
{% data reusables.webhooks.payload_url %}
Since we're developing locally for our tutorial, we'll set it to the *.ngrok.io URL, followed by /payload. For example, http://7e9ea9dc.ngrok.io/payload.
Content type
{% data reusables.webhooks.content_type %} For this tutorial, the default content type of application/json is fine.
Secret
{% data reusables.webhooks.secret %}
SSL verification
{% data reusables.webhooks.webhooks_ssl %}
Active
By default, webhook deliveries are "Active." You can choose to disable the delivery of webhook payloads by deselecting "Active."
Events
Events are at the core of webhooks. These webhooks fire whenever a certain action is taken on the repository, which your server's payload URL intercepts and acts upon.
A full list of webhook events, and when they execute, can be found in the webhooks API reference.
Since our webhook is dealing with issues in a repository, we'll click Let me select individual events and then Issues. Make sure you select Active to receive issue events for triggered webhooks. You can also select all events using the default option.
When you're finished, click Add webhook.
Now that you've created the webhook, it's time to set up our local server to test the webhook. Head on over to Configuring Your Server to learn how to do that.
Wildcard event
To configure a webhook for all events, use the wildcard (*) character to specify the webhook events. When you add the wildcard event, we'll replace any existing events you have configured with the wildcard event and send you payloads for all supported events. You'll also automatically get any new events we might add in the future.