Developer Tools

Working with Webhooks

Working with webhooks exposed by a hosted service can be tricky: the provider needs a publicly reachable URL, and you need visibility into exactly what it sent. Here are some tools that will come in handy. (Disclosure: I work at Hookdeck.)

Capturing & inspecting webhooks

Sometimes you simply want to capture a webhook call and see the payload, headers, and delivery behaviour:

• Hookdeck Console — free, no signup: open it, point a provider at the URL it gives you, and inspect and replay the requests. You can also configure custom responses (status codes and bodies) to see how a provider handles non-200 responses, and forward captured events to localhost.
• webhook.site — instant unique URL that logs every request, with scripting and forwarding options.
• RequestBin (now part of Pipedream) — the long-running request inspector, now integrated with Pipedream workflows.
• Beeceptor — capture requests and mock the endpoint’s responses with rules.
• TypedWebhook.tools — captures webhooks and infers a type schema from the payload, handy when a provider’s docs are vague about the event shape.

Webhooks to your local development environment

When developing a webhook handler you want the provider’s calls to reach the code running on your machine. Two approaches:

Event-gateway CLIs receive the webhook at a hosted URL and deliver it to localhost — so you also get queuing, history, and replay of missed events:

• Hookdeck CLI — hookdeck listen 3000 gives you a public Source URL that delivers to your local server (no account required to try it; install via Homebrew or npm). Events are retained, so you can replay a delivery against your handler as you iterate, instead of re-triggering it from the provider.
• Stripe CLI — provider-specific: stripe listen forwards your Stripe account’s events to localhost and can trigger test events.

Tunnels expose your local port directly on a public URL:

• ngrok — the best-known tunnel, with request inspection and replay built in.
• Cloudflare Tunnel — cloudflared tunnel from the Cloudflare CLI; free and solid if you’re already in the Cloudflare ecosystem.
• localtunnel — simple, free, open source.
• UltraHook — a long-running free webhook-focused tunnel.