4 ms·

Show HN: Webhooks for platforms that do not natively support them

79 points by subomi 3y ago

Hello HN, We’d like to show you our project — Nohooks[0]. The aim is to add webhooks to platforms that do not natively support webhooks. We really believe many APIs can provide a better developer experience by providing webhook notifications to enable us to automate more things. Nohooks works by intelligently polling the integrated platform's APIs, determining if a change has occurred, and generating webhook events. Nohooks currently supports webhooks from Notion’s Databases, Render’s Services & Deployments, and DigitalOcean’s Droplets. We will add more in the coming days and improve the types of events/payloads generated to enable new workflows that were previously impossible or difficult to achieve. It uses Convoy[1] to power its webhooks delivery and debugging dashboard. We welcome you to try it out and give us your feedback — what platform would you love to have webhooks for that doesn’t currently exist? What webhooks best practices would you like to see implemented? [0]https://nohooks.io https://nohooks.io [1]https://github.com/frain-dev/convoy https://github.com/frain-dev/convoy

jmholla 3y ago
What is your data and privacy policy? I'm a bit concerned not seeing anything when accessing such sensitive information. This is a non-starter for me. Even if that was the case, the only authentication being through Google is another absolute blocker for me to using your service. Also, your documentation loads extremely slows for me especially a single, static page of docs. That's clearly Notion's fault but isn't a great look. I like the idea, but this definitely feels like it needs a lot of polish and feels more like a proof of concept than an actual product.
- subomi 3y ago
  Hm. We hacked Nohooks pretty quickly off Convoy. Google auth & Notion docs were the fastest way to get auth and docs working, respectively. We'll upload a data and privacy policy soon. :)
- superzamp 3y ago
  > feels more like a proof of concept than an actual product I don't think OP ever touted it as an actual product: > We’d like to show you our project [...] This may be personal but I'd love HN and especially Show HN to be one of the last places compatible with bleeding edge demos, where creators can feel confortable to share their pet projects no matter how naive or not-(-so-)prod-ready. Otherwise I'm afraid we'll only get to deserve ProductHunt-style Show HNs, with tightly knit PR replacing substance and foolishness.
isuckatcoding 3y ago
Cool idea. What happens when these services do start offering webhooks? What does “intelligently” polling mean? You’d basically have to poll on some schedule (ideally configured by the user).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- subomi 3y ago
  Our goal is to increase the support of webhooks on the internet as much as possible. If they begin supporting webhooks, that'll be super cool. Hopefully, they use Convoy [0] :) The intelligent aspect is working around rate limits. [0] https://github.com/frain-dev/convoy https://github.com/frain-dev/convoy
EGreg 3y ago
Ever heard of HTTP error 429? We got it from providers where our clients sent too many requests https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/429 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/429
- subomi 3y ago
  Most providers allow enough requests to make this work. E.g. Render supports 400 requests/minute for GET requests. It's enough to make this work. :)
  - EGreg 3y ago
    After a while they might detect it and mitigate it
    - rtukpe 3y ago
      Oh we try to poll well below their rate limits. For example, we send about 4 requests to Render every minute.
    - subomi 3y ago
      I also do not see a good reason providers should mitigate this because we work well within the rate limit. Users already do this for services they care about if you do not natively support webhooks. DigitalOcean provides a URL to poll to know when your resources are fully provisioned.
klntsky 3y ago
It's unbelievable that Notion DB does not have webhooks. And still, your business model depends on these platforms not having features, so your market can be easily captured by them as soon as you grow big enough to be noticed.
- subomi 3y ago
  Yup. Even DigitalOcean still doesn't have webhooks despite several user requests see here [0] My business is building a Webhooks Gateway for delivering webhooks at scale - Convoy [1]. We use Convoy Cloud to power Nohooks. The goal is to show what's possible with Convoy so more providers can easily provide webhooks. [0] https://github.com/digitalocean/api-v2/issues/14 https://github.com/digitalocean/api-v2/issues/14 [1] https://github.com/frain-dev/convoy https://github.com/frain-dev/convoy
rubenfiszel 3y ago
That's super cool and this looks more like a POC than a product for now, but if this were to take off, it would complement really well what we do in our own OSS project windmill.dev [1] where users can deploy scripts in typescript/python/go/bash and more complex flows composed out of those same scripts, get a webhook and a UI to trigger them. Users currently have to either set a schedule to regularly poll or setup a webhook on the event source. This would be a consolidated way for them to have all their event sources in the same place. [1]: https://github.com/windmill-labs/windmill https://github.com/windmill-labs/windmill
- subomi 3y ago
  Definitely, I'd love to see this happen. There are a whole lot of events we can generate from DigitalOcean Resources - K8s resources, firewalls, block storage etc.
rajasimon 3y ago
I own NotionWebhook.com and I have not deployed my service yet which offers exactly the same. you can DM me here https://twitter.com/rajasimon https://twitter.com/rajasimon to get access.
subomi 3y ago
Update: Nohooks Backend is now open source [0]. The goal is to collectively improve the polling system as well as generate more useful event types/payloads. It was written in Rails :D [0] https://github.com/frain-dev/nohooks-backend https://github.com/frain-dev/nohooks-backend
ctrlaltdylan 3y ago
Pipedream has a similar paradigm, and Notion support as well. https://pipedream.com/apps/notion https://pipedream.com/apps/notion You can write your own "Sources" that can poll any API, it even includes deduping for free: https://pipedream.com/docs/components https://pipedream.com/docs/components. I build custom sources all of the time for scraping RSS feeds, WooCommerce stores, and then triggering low code workflows as if they are webhooks.
- Studywithdidi 3y ago
  And Pipedream supports Svix[1] which means it has a top notch webhooks experience. 1: https://pipedream.com/apps/svix https://pipedream.com/apps/svix
Traubenfuchs 3y ago
I still didn't find an explanation of what's the difference between callbacks with self service user maintainable HTTP url targets and what is now called webhooks. Can anyone here please elucidate?
- subomi 3y ago
  What you described seems to me like webhooks. :) Webhooks aren't anything new really, Jeff Lindsay [0] coined them way back in 2007 while at Twilio but they aren't well understood and implemented today. [0] https://twitter.com/progrium https://twitter.com/progrium
  - Traubenfuchs 3y ago
    If that's how it is, I really, really don't like the mysterious, badly defined word "webhook". My company offers a way to configure a default or overwrite-per-individual-process callback url for... at least 10 years now. It's the primary way for us to communicate our results to our direct customers and it's two database columns, packing some results in a JSON object, an SNS/SQS queue and executing a HTTP request. In any case, it's very primitive and nothing worth getting its own name and countless blog posts written about.
    - subomi 3y ago
      On the contrary, I like the name. :) And while you might have something that works for your company, it most likely won't meet many other companies needs. You can check webhooks.fyi[0] by Ngrok for the various implementations and edge cases. [0] https://webhooks.fyi https://webhooks.fyi

79 points by subomi 3y ago

jmholla 3y ago

What is your data and privacy policy? I'm a bit concerned not seeing anything when accessing such sensitive information. This is a non-starter for me. Even if that was the case, the only authentication being through Google is another absolute blocker for me to using your service. Also, your documentation loads extremely slows for me especially a single, static page of docs. That's clearly Notion's fault but isn't a great look. I like the idea, but this definitely feels like it needs a lot of polish and feels more like a proof of concept than an actual product.

subomi 3y ago
Hm. We hacked Nohooks pretty quickly off Convoy. Google auth & Notion docs were the fastest way to get auth and docs working, respectively. We'll upload a data and privacy policy soon. :)
superzamp 3y ago
> feels more like a proof of concept than an actual product I don't think OP ever touted it as an actual product: > We’d like to show you our project [...] This may be personal but I'd love HN and especially Show HN to be one of the last places compatible with bleeding edge demos, where creators can feel confortable to share their pet projects no matter how naive or not-(-so-)prod-ready. Otherwise I'm afraid we'll only get to deserve ProductHunt-style Show HNs, with tightly knit PR replacing substance and foolishness.

isuckatcoding 3y ago

Cool idea. What happens when these services do start offering webhooks? What does “intelligently” polling mean? You’d basically have to poll on some schedule (ideally configured by the user).

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
subomi 3y ago
Our goal is to increase the support of webhooks on the internet as much as possible. If they begin supporting webhooks, that'll be super cool. Hopefully, they use Convoy [0] :) The intelligent aspect is working around rate limits. [0] https://github.com/frain-dev/convoy https://github.com/frain-dev/convoy

EGreg 3y ago

Ever heard of HTTP error 429? We got it from providers where our clients sent too many requests https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/429 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/429

subomi 3y ago
Most providers allow enough requests to make this work. E.g. Render supports 400 requests/minute for GET requests. It's enough to make this work. :)
- EGreg 3y ago
  After a while they might detect it and mitigate it
  - rtukpe 3y ago
    Oh we try to poll well below their rate limits. For example, we send about 4 requests to Render every minute.
  - subomi 3y ago
    I also do not see a good reason providers should mitigate this because we work well within the rate limit. Users already do this for services they care about if you do not natively support webhooks. DigitalOcean provides a URL to poll to know when your resources are fully provisioned.

klntsky 3y ago

It's unbelievable that Notion DB does not have webhooks. And still, your business model depends on these platforms not having features, so your market can be easily captured by them as soon as you grow big enough to be noticed.

subomi 3y ago
Yup. Even DigitalOcean still doesn't have webhooks despite several user requests see here [0] My business is building a Webhooks Gateway for delivering webhooks at scale - Convoy [1]. We use Convoy Cloud to power Nohooks. The goal is to show what's possible with Convoy so more providers can easily provide webhooks. [0] https://github.com/digitalocean/api-v2/issues/14 https://github.com/digitalocean/api-v2/issues/14 [1] https://github.com/frain-dev/convoy https://github.com/frain-dev/convoy

rubenfiszel 3y ago

That's super cool and this looks more like a POC than a product for now, but if this were to take off, it would complement really well what we do in our own OSS project windmill.dev [1] where users can deploy scripts in typescript/python/go/bash and more complex flows composed out of those same scripts, get a webhook and a UI to trigger them. Users currently have to either set a schedule to regularly poll or setup a webhook on the event source. This would be a consolidated way for them to have all their event sources in the same place. [1]: https://github.com/windmill-labs/windmill https://github.com/windmill-labs/windmill

subomi 3y ago
Definitely, I'd love to see this happen. There are a whole lot of events we can generate from DigitalOcean Resources - K8s resources, firewalls, block storage etc.

rajasimon 3y ago

I own NotionWebhook.com and I have not deployed my service yet which offers exactly the same. you can DM me here https://twitter.com/rajasimon https://twitter.com/rajasimon to get access.

subomi 3y ago

Update: Nohooks Backend is now open source [0]. The goal is to collectively improve the polling system as well as generate more useful event types/payloads. It was written in Rails :D [0] https://github.com/frain-dev/nohooks-backend https://github.com/frain-dev/nohooks-backend

ctrlaltdylan 3y ago

Pipedream has a similar paradigm, and Notion support as well. https://pipedream.com/apps/notion https://pipedream.com/apps/notion You can write your own "Sources" that can poll any API, it even includes deduping for free: https://pipedream.com/docs/components https://pipedream.com/docs/components. I build custom sources all of the time for scraping RSS feeds, WooCommerce stores, and then triggering low code workflows as if they are webhooks.

Studywithdidi 3y ago
And Pipedream supports Svix[1] which means it has a top notch webhooks experience. 1: https://pipedream.com/apps/svix https://pipedream.com/apps/svix

Traubenfuchs 3y ago

I still didn't find an explanation of what's the difference between callbacks with self service user maintainable HTTP url targets and what is now called webhooks. Can anyone here please elucidate?

subomi 3y ago
What you described seems to me like webhooks. :) Webhooks aren't anything new really, Jeff Lindsay [0] coined them way back in 2007 while at Twilio but they aren't well understood and implemented today. [0] https://twitter.com/progrium https://twitter.com/progrium
- Traubenfuchs 3y ago
  If that's how it is, I really, really don't like the mysterious, badly defined word "webhook". My company offers a way to configure a default or overwrite-per-individual-process callback url for... at least 10 years now. It's the primary way for us to communicate our results to our direct customers and it's two database columns, packing some results in a JSON object, an SNS/SQS queue and executing a HTTP request. In any case, it's very primitive and nothing worth getting its own name and countless blog posts written about.
  - subomi 3y ago
    On the contrary, I like the name. :) And while you might have something that works for your company, it most likely won't meet many other companies needs. You can check webhooks.fyi[0] by Ngrok for the various implementations and edge cases. [0] https://webhooks.fyi https://webhooks.fyi