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CometChat can send webhook events that notify your application any time an event happens on your account.

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Setting up webhooks

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Create a webhook endpoint

Webhook data is sent as JSON in the POST request body. Creating a webhook endpoint on your server is no different from creating any page on your website. With PHP, you might create a new .php file on your server; with a Ruby framework like Sinatra, you would add a new route with the desired URL.

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Test the endpoint locally

Once you’ve added an endpoint to your server, start an instance locally and use a tool like ngrok to make your endpoint available for receiving events. Start ngrok in a command prompt with the same port number that you have configured for your server (e.g., ./ngrok http 8000). You should see information about your tunnel session such as status, expiration, and version. Take note of the Forwarding addresses (e.g., https://xxxxxxxx.ngrok.io -> localhost:8000) as this is required for the following step.

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Configure webhook settings

With your endpoint created, you need to tell CometChat about where to send events to. In the Dashboard’s Webhooks section, click Create Webhook to reveal a form to add a new webhook for receiving events. You can enter any URL as the destination for events. However, this should be a dedicated page on your server that is set up to receive webhook events. Once you’ve created the webhook, click View/Update to add a trigger. We support two types of triggers-
TriggerDescription
after_messageThe endpoint will be triggered after a message is sent.
before_messageThe endpoint will be triggered when a message is in-flight.
The after_message trigger is fairly straightforward. CometChat will call your endpoint once a message has been sent. The before_message trigger is useful when you want to add metadata to a message before it reaches the recipient. The data you return will be automatically added to the message metadata:
  • JSON
{
  "@injected": {
    "webhooks": {
      "webhook-id": {
        // JSON Object Response From Endpoint
      }
    }
  }
}
You can also decide to drop a message by returning the following JSON object-
  • JSON
{
  "action": "do_not_propagate"
}

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Processing the data

Here is a sample format for the data you will receive-
  • JSON
{
    "trigger": "after_message",
    "data": {
        "id": "<message id>",
        "sender": "<sender uid>",
        "receiverType": "<receiverType can be user or group>",
        "receiver": "<receiver uid>",
        "category": "<message category>",
        "type": "<message type>",
        "data": {
            "text": "Hi",
            "entities": {
                "sender": {
                    "entity": {
                        "uid": "<sender uid>",
                        "name": "<sender name>",
                        "avatar": "<sender avatar>",
                        "metadata": {
                            "<key>": "<value>",
                            "@private": {
                                "<key>": "<value>",
                            },
                        },
                        "status": "<status>",
                        "role": "<role>",
                    },
                    "entityType": "user",
                },
                "receiver": {
                    "entity": {
                        "uid":  "<receiver uid>",
                        "name":  "<receiver name>",
                        "avatar": "<receiver avatar>",
                        "metadata": {
                            "<key>": "<value>",
                            "@private": {
                                "<key>": "<value>",
                            },
                        },
                        "status": "<status>",
                        "role": "<role>",
                    },
                    "entityType": "<receiver entityType can be either user or group>",
                },
            },
        },
        "sentAt": <unix timestamp at which message was sent>,
        "updatedAt": <unix timestamp at which message was updated>,
        "receipts": {
            "data": {},
        },
    },
    "appId": "<appId>",
    "<interface type can be extension, bot or webhook>": "<interface id>",
}
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