Tutorial: Creating a Webhook Adapter

LimaCharlie supports webhooks as a telemetry ingestion method. Webhooks are technically cloud Adapters, as they cannot be deployed on-prem or through the downloadable Adapter binary.

Webhook adapters are created by enabling a webhook through the cloud_sensor Hive feature. Webhook creation will enable a specific URL that can receive webhooks from any platform. Received data will be ingested in LimaCharlie as a Sensor, similar to an Office365 or Syslog Adapter.

Creating a Webhook Adapter

Webhook adapters can be created either through the webapp, API, or CLI. Before creation, let's look at the basic webhook configuration and values necessary to build the adapter.

{
    "sensor_type": "webhook",
    "webhook": {
        // This secret value will be part of the URL to accept your webhooks.
        // It enables you to prevent or revoke unauthorized access to a hook.
        "secret": "some-secret-value-hard-to-predict",

        // Placeholder for generic webhook signature validation.
        // If you require a specific format, please get in touch with us.
        "signature_secret": "",
        "signature_header": "",
        "signature_scheme": "",

        // Format with which the data is ingested in LC.
        "client_options": {
            // Provide your own name for the webhook adapter
            "hostname": "<any_name>",
            "identity": {
                // Provide the OID of the organization you wish to send to
                "oid": "<oid>",
                // Provide the installation key to be used for the adapter
                "installation_key": "<installation_key>"
            },
            "platform": "json",
            "sensor_seed_key": "<any-super-secret-seed-key>"
        }
    }
}

When the above configuration is provided to LimaCharlie, a webhook adapter will appear and be available for webhook event ingestion. Here's an example of creating the above record through the LimaCharlie CLI:

echo '{"sensor_type": "webhook", "webhook": {"secret": "some-secret-value-hard-to-predict", "signature_secret": "", "signature_header": "", "signature_scheme": "", "client_options": {"hostname": "<any_name>", "identity": {"oid": "<oid>", "installation_key": "<installation_key>"}, "platform": "json", "sensor_seed_key": "test-webhook"}}}' | limacharlie hive set cloud_sensor --key my-webhook --data -

After creating the webhook, you will be provided with a geo-dependent URL, respective to your LimaCharlie Organization location. You can also retrieve your webhook URLs with either of the following commands:

• REST API: getOrgURLs

• Python SDK:

python3 -c "import limacharlie; print(limacharlie.Manager().getOrgURLs()['hooks'])"

Using the webhook adapter

After capturing the webhook URL in the previous step, only a few more pieces of data are necessary to construct the webhook ingestion.

Let's assume the returned domain looks like 9157798c50af372c.hook.limacharlie.io, the format of the URL would be:

https://9157798c50af372c.hook.limacharlie.io/OID/HOOKNAME/SECRET, where:

• OID is the Organization OID provided in the configuration above.

• HOOKNAME is the name of the hook provided in the configuration above.

• SECRET is the secret value provided in the configuration. You can provide the secret value in the URL or as an HTTP header named lc-secret.

Supported Webhook Format

When sending data via POST requests to the URL, the body of your request is expected to be one or many JSON events. Supported formats include:

• Simple JSON object:

  • {"some":"data"}

• List of JSON objects:

  • [{"some":"data"},{"some":"data"}]

• Newline separated JSON objects like:

{"some":"data"}
{"some":"data"}
{"some":"data"}

Or, one of the above, but compressed using gzip.

With the completed webhook URL, you can begin sending events and will see them in the Timeline for your webhook Adapater.