About webhooks
Webhooks allow an API to exchange information with other applications through HTTP post requests. They can be used for notifications when an expected event (as previously configured by the user) has occurred.
Since they allow real-time communication, webhooks are efficient and performant.
Webhooks can be used to build integrations with extendable applications such as Slack, GitHub, and Dropbox.
Webhooks communicate in both directions:
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Outgoing webhooks are a simple way to post notifications from an API to an external resource, such as to post a message to a Slack channel. See the Outgoing webhooks section in the WorkflowGen Integration Guide for more information.
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Incoming webhooks can be sent from external applications to trigger exceptions when an expected event has occurred. In this case, the API should be configured to receive external application payloads and interpret them. See the Incoming webhooks section in the WorkflowGen Integration Guide for more information.
Integrating webhooks with WorkflowGen
WorkflowGen uses the RESTAPICLIENT and SENDHTTPPOST workflow applications to send outgoing webhooks to external applications using JSON or URLENCODED payloads. The application will then receive and process the response from the external API.
It is recommended to use the RESTAPICLIENT workflow application instead of SENDHTTPPOST, since RESTAPICLIENT provides more extensive features.
For an example of how you can use SENDHTTPPOST to send messages to Slack channels from WorkflowGen, see the Workflow Application: Using SENDHTTPPOST to send messages to Slack topic.
For samples of APIs that use SENDHTTPPOST, see the SENDHTTPPOST Workflow Application repository on GitHub.
For more information, see the RESTAPICLIENT Workflow Application and SENDHTTPPOST Workflow Application sections in the WorkflowGen Administration Guide.