I have had some individuals ask me why I think webhooks are useful. What’s the point, they ask. These are always people who have not seen the presentation. It’s obvious I don’t have an effective way to explain their benefit purely in a verbal way.
Webhooks are not advanced technology. They have been around in some form for a long time. We are naming them.
What are the key points I want to convey about webhooks?
Webhooks have been around, however they have always been used internally in application to connect to other parts of an application or to connect to another application. We want to expose this to users. That is, we want applications to allow users to enter a URL which the application will call if it needs to send some information to the user.
What that URL does is of no concern to the application. If you are building an application and I ask you to support webhooks, do not ask me what the user will do with the data. It isn’t any of your business or mine. If we try to second guess what users will do with the data, we will cripple the movement. After some customers use your webhooks for a while, they will tell you exactly what they need from you.
If broadly implemented, webhooks enable an enormous application ecosystem.
Each person will then be able to construct an ever growing application web that is customized to how they work and what tools they wish to use.
If I have totally lost you, please forgive me. Contact me and I will be glad to review it with you.

I was at Barcamp Orlando yesterday.  I got to the location at 7:48 AM.  There’s a story behind that one. I had set the alarm in my hotel for 8:00.  When it went off, I snoozed for a few minutes then hustled out the door to try to get there before 9:00.  I was standing in front of 37 North Orange when I realized that there was no one around.  It was a ghost town.   I looked at my phone.  It read 7:48.  Apparently, I had set the clock in the hotel an hour ahead.

Now to get coffee.  An older man with a huge green backpack appoached me asking if I knew where to get coffee.  I told him I wasn’t from there but I wanted coffee as well.  I told him we would find some together.  We walked up the street and then back, while he explained to me that he was homeless and come there from Fort Myers for his son’s wedding who he could not find.  I got to hear some of his life story.  When we found Starbucks, he immediately started recounting the same story to the girl behind the counter.  I bought him coffee.

I was wearing a barcamp Orlando shirt I had made and he asked me what that was.  I explained the concept.  He thought maybe he should come do a talk on how to be homeless.  I told him he was certainly welcome to do that.

When I got back to the location, Starbucks latte in hand, a few others had showed up.  Someone asked me what I would be talking about and I sai Webhooks.  The obvious next question was “what is that?”.  I gave the 1 minute version.

More people arrived.  I happened to be standing close to the signup desk when they opened registration.  At the end of the sign up table was the board.  I got one of the first slots.  I figured I would get my talk done and over with.  I had to haul ass back to my car to get my laptop.  A 17in laptop is nice but heavy so I had left it in the car until I needed it.  Add my camera bag to that and I was quite the pack mule.

I got to the Gibson showroom with a few minutes to spare.  I was worried that the turnout might be low because it was the first slot.  By the time I got going, it was full.  The talk went off well.

When I used the new webhooks tag line, “webhooks: it’s so simple you’ll think it is stupid” some one recognized it and gave me a cheer.

I will be doing a presentation at barcamp orlando tomorrow.  For those who do not know about Webhooks, here is a brief overview.

Before I start, you should know that webhooks does not involve any particular technology.  It does not matter if you use PHP, C++, Ruby, DotNET, C-sharp, or any such language or system.  If you program for the web this is something you should know about.

Second, as a technology, it is easy to implement.  This is especially true if your software triggers on events and sends emails today.  In terms of technical difficulty, webhooks are very similar.

And now back to our regular programming.

If you are with me, I said webhooks are similar to sending email that triggers on events.  This is the difference. Instead of sending an email, you will send an HTTP POST.  “Hold on there” you say.  It cannot be that easy.

Webhooks are so simple it you’ll think it’s stupid

That’s the latest from Jeff Lindsay (Twitter: @progrium). http://blog.webhooks.org/

Webhooks are not rocket science.  It is their application in such a broad way that makes them valuable.  The way it works is that an application has an event happen.  This could be something like a task gets updated.  It then sends a message to a URL behind which sits a small piece of code.  That piece of code has to respond to the message in any way it wants.  The application that triggered the event does not care what the code does.  That is why the language it’s written in does not matter.  Use Ruby, PHP, DotNet, PERL, C-Sharp or whatever programming language you want.

The value of this really comes to light when you consider connecting up several different applications to make a super system comprised if several parts.

I hope you take the time to learn more about webhooks.  Years from now, these should be taken as matter of fact.