Receiving messages via Webhook
This documentation describes how to setup webhooks for the WhatsApp Business API.
Webhooks is a mechanism which enables applications to communicate with each other programmatically. It allows you to send real-time data from one application to another whenever a given event occurs. You can use the webhook to determine which endpoint we should forward the real-time data (aka Notifications).
Whenever a specific event occurs, the WhatsApp Business API Client sees the event, collects the data, and immediately sends a notification (user-defined HTTP callbacks) to the webhook URL specified.
There are 3 main objects you can receive via webhooks:
messages: Used to notify you when you get a new message and what is in the new message.statuses: Used to notify you when there's a status change in a message you sent.errors: When there are any out-of-band errors that occur in the normal operation of the application, this array provides a description of the error.
It is essential that your Webhook URL returns an
HTTPS 200 OK response to notifications. Otherwise, the WhatsApp Business API client considers that notification as failed and tries again after a delay.To deploy a live webhook that can receive events from the WhatsApp Business API client, your code must have HTTPS support and a valid SSL certificate.
Only use asynchronous handling of webhooks
Do not process incoming messages and notifications in the webhook handler; acknowledge immediately after receiving the webhook (with status 200), then you can process the data.
All incoming messages will automatically show as
delivered (two grey ticks).
To make them appear as read (two colored ticks), you have to mark the messages as read.
For stable functioning of WABA it is recommended make the webhook performance as fast as possible. That means:
- Design your service to respond as quickly, and as close to your network speed as possible.
- Respond with a
200status code immediately after receiving a notification and storing it. The callback's payload should not be processed before responding as this can lead to unacceptable delays; instead, send the response first then (asynchronously) process the payload. - Reduce network latency by setting up your webhook server closer to 360dialog's datacenters (Central and Eastern Europe).
- Sending
onemessage as opposed to getting one causes up tothreecallback notifications (sent,deliveredandread). It means that the speed of processing concurrent requests should increases in accordance with the load of the number. In addition to a direct increase in the speed of processing notifications, we recommend to make your webhook process as many parallel requests as possible. Otherwise, this can lead to the occurrence and overflow of the message queue.
The webhook URL is a resource address to which the WhatsApp Servers sends notifications, which are triggered by specific events. A suitable webhook URL must be supplied by you or by your Partner Software Provider / ISV.
You only need to set your Webhook URL once. Although you can update it or remove it at any time.
You must set a Webhook URL once per number.
If you generate a new API-KEY, the webhook URL for that number will be removed. So you must reset it using the new API-KEY.
If you are using On-Premise hosting, use the base-url
waba.360dialog.io.If you are using Cloud API hosting, you must use the base-url
waba-v2.360dialog.ioWebhook URLs for Cloud API do not support "
_"(underscore) or ":xxxx"(port)in (sub)domain names.
Invalid webhook URL: https://your_webhook.example.com
Valid webhook URL: https://yourwebhook.example.com
Invalid webhook URL:https://subdomain.your_webhook.example.com:3000
Valid webhook URL: https://subdomain.yourwebhook.example.compost
https://[base-url]
/v1/configs/webhook
Set Webhook URL
Body
{
"url": URL,
"headers": {
"header_1": string,
"header_2": string
}
}
If the webhook URL needs to be authorized by user,
USER and PASS should be provided in the header Authorization that contains Basic base64(USER:PASS). Request body example for USER=
testuser and PASS=testpassBody
{
"url": "https://www.example.com/webhook",
"headers": {
"Authorization": "Basic dGVzdHVzZXI6dGVzdHBhc3M="
}
}
If the webhook URL is already set, make a GET request to retrieve the existing resource.
get
https://[base-url]
/v1/configs/webhook
Retrieve existing webhook URL
Request
Response
D360-API-KEY: adafABC43
Content-Type: application/json
{
"url": "https://www.example.com/webhook",
"headers": {
"Authorization": "Basic dGVzdHVzZXI6dGVzdHBhc3M="
}
}
When a customer sends you a message, the WhatsApp Business API client will send an HTTP POST request notification to the webhook URL with the details that are described in the following documents:
On-Premise | Cloud API |
|---|---|
After a Webhook is set, you will be able to receive the following events:
- phone_number_name_update"
- "phone_number_quality_update"
- "account_update"
- "account_review_update"
- "message_template_status_update"
- "business_capability_update"
- "template_category_update"
- "payment" (if eligible)
- 302-redirect: Redirects are not followed by the webhook gateway Please ensure that there is always HTTPS
200as a response code. - SSL-errors: Please ensure that the callback-URLs are using SSL/TLS, and that the certificates are valid and that the certificate chain is complete.
- You start processing in the callback thread. Please do only acknowledge messages and notifications and start processing in a separate thread.
- Callbacks will be terminated after a defined timeout and there will be a retry.
- Duplicates messages can be sent to a WhatsApp webhook as the only guarantee provided is that messages will be received at least once (as opposed to exactly once). If this is affecting how messages are processed on your end, then we suggest deduping webhook messages based on the
message_id.
Last modified 1mo ago