Intro to Webhooks
High-level overview for webhooks used with notifications
Webhooks are HTTP callbacks that allow event-driven communication between two APIs. They allow apps to send automated messages or information to other applications. They’re like the postal service delivering a letter or package to your door. When a sender ships a package, you receive it without asking for it.
Who Uses a Webhook?
Webhooks are generally used in server-to-server communication from third-party services.
Why Are They Beneficial?
When email was a newer technology, checking email involved initiating a request to an email server, which would then download your emails to your email client. Later email systems synchronized automatically with your email client. Emails would download as you received them rather than on-demand.
That's what webhooks do for your application. You don't have to initiate checks for new information in your application code or as part of a batch process. Instead, webhooks push data to you whenever a triggering event occurs.
How Do Webhooks Work on Our System
Akoya's webhooks enable apps to retrieve status notifications for components in the network. You can decide what event type notifications you receive.
Indicate what events you’re interested in and where we should send the notifications.
How to Get Started
You’ll need to do a few things:
Retrieve your service credentials from the Data Recipient Hub. These are different than the clientId and secret used to make data API calls.
Tell us which events you’re interested in receiving and where the API endpoint should send them.
Make sure the system can actually reach that endpoint. You’ll want to verify that your firewall can accept inbound connections over TCP 443 from Akoya to the server hosting your endpoint.
Add some meaningful logic to process the information you receive from the webhook.
Types of Events You Can Receive
We currently have two types of events available for you to consume: maintenance and consent.
Maintenance: Planned or unplanned outages that occur on the system network
Consent: Consent updates that your users make. The API notifies you when a user revokes their consent at a data provider's portal, or when they add or remove accounts.
See our technical guide for more details on using webhooks to receive notifications.