What are webhooks

Luiza Jurczyk
2 min read
updated: Mar 9, 2022

This article refers to old ChatBot builder.

Click here if you use new Visual Builder and want to read the updated version of this article.

Your bot doesn’t have to be just a chatty assistant. It can also handle more advanced actions for you such as completing purchases, sending receipts and sending updated data from your databases. You can do that using webhooks.

Webhooks, also called a web callback or HTTP push API, are the API concepts that are getting more and more popular. Thanks to their lightweight and speed they provide data between applications immediately. With webhooks, you can pass and retrieve information from a matched interaction to your web service.

Main characteristicsLink icon

  • you can set up separate webhooks for each interaction

  • pick the language you like to create webhooks: PHP, Node.js, Java, JavaScript, C++ etc.

  • webhooks returns data to your bot, that’s why responses from webhooks are added to bot responses

How to set up my first webhookLink icon

Go to our Setting up your webhook tutorial to check how you can create your first webhook connected with ChatBot.

Webhook requestLink icon

When an interaction has a filled Webhook section, our backend service send the matched interaction to the webhook by POST request.

Webhook schemaLink icon

Example of the request content sent to the webhook address:

{
    "conversationId": "5cc6d3c0b4001336f89de71a",
    "result": {
        "source": "app",
        "resolvedQuery": "1",
        "confidence": 0.5,
        "score": 1,
        "lifespan": 2,
        "incomplete": false,
        "storyId": "5cbf273ef96720b7e391b418",
        "interaction": {
            "id": "5cc6d3b845988e755a9f5e88",
            "name": "Interaction A",
            "action": ""
        },
        "parameters": {},
        "sessionParameters": {},
        "contexts": [
            {
                "id": "5cc6d3b845988e755a9f5e88",
                "name": "Interaction A",
                "action": "",
                "parameters": {}
            },
            {
                "type": "welcome",
                "name": "Welcome Interaction",
                "action": "default.welcome",
                "parameters": {}
            }
        ],
        "fulfillment": [
            {
                "type": "webhook",
                "debug": true,
                "webhookId": "5cc6d3b245988e65419f5e86",
                "used": true
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "delay": 2000,
                "message": "Hi John Example"
            }
        ]
    },
    "sessionId": "125338496333449767",
    "timestamp": "2019-04-29T10:36:54.656Z",
    "status": {
        "code": 200,
        "type": "success"
    }
}

LimitsLink icon

  • Timeout for service response is 10 seconds;

  • The maximum response size 100kb;

  • The response must be provided in JSON format;

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