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Charles Ouellet
Charles Ouellet

Posted on • Originally published at snipcart.com on

What are Webhooks? Easy Explanation & Tutorial

What are Webhooks? Easy Explanation & Tutorial

Our nervous system is a real wonder.

Just think of that brain of ours... continually sending messages all over our bodies. Notifying us when we need to eat, sleep, or remove our hand from that stove.

Could you imagine having to consciously ask your brain if you’re hungry, hurt or tired?

Life would be unmanageable.

Good news is the same automation & notification system can also be at the core of your web development projects.

One way to get there is by using webhooks. You probably use them fairly often, without even knowing what they really are. You might even be confusing them with APIs to this point.

So let's take time today to explain what webhooks are and how leveraging them will step up your dev game.

What you’ll find in this post:

  • A webhook definition
  • Real-life webhook examples
  • A development flow for webhooks integration
  • A list of development tools
  • (Slightly) advanced features

Trust me dev padawan, change your life, webhooks will.

What are webhooks?

Put bluntly: webhooks are a way for apps to communicate between them automatically.

  • MailChimp uses a webhook to signup users from your website to your newsletter.
  • Paypal uses it to tell your accounting app when your clients pay you.
  • Shopify offers webhooks to keep parts of your commerce system up-to-date, so you don’t have to enter new transaction details manually.

→ Read the full post here

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