The standards cover aspects like payload size, metadata, headers, and signature schemes, aiming to set benchmarks for quality webhooks.
Growth marketing manager Kenichi Ruf and Tom Hacohen, the CEO of Svix, have created a set of standards for webhooks, Standard Webhooks. They initiated a coalition last year to address fragmentation issues related to webhooks. The committee includes representatives from various tech companies such as Zapier, Twilio, Lob, Mux, ngrok, Supabase, and Kong, aiming to lend weight and credibility to the standard.
Webhooks, different from APIs, are primarily used for real-time data transfer and automating workflows in various applications like chat messages, payment alerts, and inventory updates. One of the major issues in webhooks is the lack of standardisation.
The diverse ways in which webhooks are sent create challenges for developers receiving them, often requiring them to adjust their code for each new source. The lack of standardised protocols for retrying failed webhook messages adds to the complexity. The best practice of exponential backoff isn’t uniformly applied across services.
Open Source Standard Webhooks Specification is launched on GitHub and through a dedicated website. This initiative provides tools and guidelines for adopting standard webhook protocols. The standards cover aspects like payload size, metadata, headers, and signature schemes, aiming to set benchmarks for quality webhooks and simplify the implementation process.
Standardising webhooks would allow developers to reuse more code and reduce the need to start from scratch for each new endpoint. The standards aim to ensure quality and uniformity in webhook technologies, making them more reliable and easier to integrate. The goal of these efforts is to make the lives of developers easier by providing a comprehensive, standardised approach to webhooks.
