Creating a Webhook Adapter
  • 26 Aug 2023
  • 2 Minutes to read
  • Contributors
  • Dark
    Light

Creating a Webhook Adapter

  • Dark
    Light

Article Summary

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:

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.


Was this article helpful?