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Understanding Webhooks: How They Facilitate Real-Time Communication and Integration Between Web Services
Living in our digitally interconnected world, we’ve become accustomed to various online platforms and web services working together smoothly to provide us with seamless experiences. Underpinning this seamless integration is a vital communication tool that is often underappreciated: webhooks. Known to tech enthusiasts as “user-defined HTTP callbacks,” webhooks are a key enabler of real-time communication and continuous integration. Today, we’ll delve into the world of webhooks, breaking down their workings and highlighting their significance in our digital lives.
Imagine a world where applications could not only communicate but also trigger events in one another. Welcome to the universe of webhooks! They allow an application to notify another application of an event via a straightforward HTTP request. But here’s the interesting twist: unlike conventional APIs that require an application to actively request data from another, webhooks reverse this control flow. Instead, the receiving application sets up a webhook URL, and the originating application sends an HTTP request to this URL when a certain event unfolds.
Let’s illustrate this with a relatable example. Suppose you’ve developed a web application that hosts a repository of code. Now, you…
