A Few Words On Webhooks

In 2006 during working on a startup, Jeff Lindsay wrote about an architectural pattern he called “webhooks”. Since then almost all web developers have heard this term.

I think webhooks are mostly based on the Observer design pattern. Observer is a pattern where an observer is observing (looking) for an event to be fired. The important part here is that the observer is not polling anything, It registers itself to the origin to get notified when the desired event happens. Polling is another method where the destination is checking for new changes in origin constantly, As opposed to what the observer pattern does.

Webhooks are very similar to observers. A webhook is basically an endpoint that should be notified (called) when an event is dispatched. This approach is better than the “Polling” method in most cases. It is faster and uses less resource.

So by webhooks, Applications can use a so-called “hook”, To send automated messages to each other when something (an event) happens. For example, When you buy a product online, You receive an email or an SMS. What happens here is that the email or SMS provider provides an endpoint (in this context a webhook) and the store calls this endpoint when for example an order is placed.

You can learn more about webhooks in this crash course on youtube.