How to Route Multiple Paystack Webhooks with one Webhook URL

Paystack offers powerful payment solutions for businesses in Nigeria and across Africa, but one common challenge for developers is the limitation of using only one webhook URL on the Paystack dashboard. For developers managing multiple projects, this restriction can become a major issue, especially when dealing with various applications or environments that require different webhook handling processes.

Fortunately, Hookdeck offers an easy solution to route webhooks from a single Paystack URL to multiple endpoints across various projects. In this article, we’ll learn how to route multiple webhooks on your paystack projects with one webhook URL using Hookdeck. Let’s dive right in 😉

Why You Might Need Multiple Webhook Endpoints for Paystack

So before we go into main stuff, let's examine why having multiple webhook endpoints is necessary 👇🏽

1. Managing Multiple Projects: If you're handling more than one application that needs to process payment events, routing all webhooks to a single URL won't suffice. Basically what this means is since Paystack only allows one webhook URL, you'd need a way to separate or "route" the incoming webhooks to different places, depending on which project they are meant for and a single URL for all projects won't be able to distinguish between them or allow for tailored responses.
2. Environment Separation: You may want to route webhooks to different environments (e.g., development, staging, production (this is basically ) to ensure events are handled correctly without interfering with your live environment.
3. Custom Processing Logic: Different applications or modules might require unique logic to process events, which can be difficult to achieve through a single webhook endpoint.

With these scenarios in mind, let's see how Hookdeck makes managing multiple Paystack webhooks easier.

What is Hookdeck?

Hookdeck is a webhook infrastructure service that allows you to receive, manage, and route webhooks with ease. It acts as an intermediary between your application and webhook providers (like Paystack), enabling you to process webhooks more reliably and flexibly.

One of Hookdeck's powerful features is the ability to route incoming webhook events to multiple destinations based on the rules you define.

How to Use Hookdeck with Paystack

Now that you have a basic idea on what hookdeck is, Let’s now walk through the process of setting up Hookdeck to manage and route multiple Paystack webhooks. 👇🏼

1. Create a Hookdeck Account

The first step is to sign up for a Hookdeck account if you haven't already. You can create a free account on their website, which offers all the essential features to get started.

💡 if for some reason the website does not open on your browser, you can download cloudfare warp. which is a free VPN service that uses Cloudflare's global network to improve your internet connection's speed, security, and privacy. that being said. let’s move on to the next step.

2. Set Up a New Connection on Hookdeck

After signing up, you’ll need to create a connection in Hookdeck. A connection basically acts as a single webhook endpoint that you’ll later use on your Paystack dashboard.

1. In your Hookdeck dashboard, click on Connection.

1. After clicking on create connection you will directed to another page where you have to do a couple of things 👇🏽

• You have to define your request source by adding a source name (e.g., Paystack webhook or anything you want).

• You also need to define your event destination by adding a destination name and an endpoint URL. So if you already have an endpoint you are using as your webhook endpoint, on paystack you can add that one. lastly, you can leave the destination type as it is.

• Define your connection rules: I haven't needed this for my current projects. However, it allows you to set up different rules to listen for various events. This is particularly useful if you're using one source URL for multiple platforms (like Paystack, Stripe, or Shopify). You'd set up rules to differentiate between them. It's also helpful if you have two Paystack projects—one using a subscription method and the other using the normal charge method (which we'll discuss in step 4). But if you're just using one webhook URL for all your Paystack projects, you can skip this step.

• Lastly, set up a connection name. While optional, it's recommended if you have multiple connections with the same source and destination, or if you use the API. Once you're done, click on Create

You should see something like this after creating a connection. 👇🏽

3. Configure the Paystack Webhook

Now that you have a Hookdeck URL, copy it and go to your Paystack dashboard to configure your webhook:

1. Log in to your Paystack dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings > Webhooks.
3. Replace your current webhook URL with the one provided by Hookdeck.
4. Save the changes.

At this point, all Paystack events will be sent to the Hookdeck URL, which will act as your single point of entry for webhook requests.

4. Set Up Destinations in Hookdeck

Once your Hookdeck connection is receiving Paystack events, the next step is to configure Destinations, which is how Hookdeck forwards your webhooks to the appropriate endpoints based on the events.

1. Go to your Hookdeck dashboard and click on the Connection you created for Paystack.
2. Click on the connection chain - in this case it will be the test-connection
3. Once you've clicked on the test-connection, you can use Hookdeck’s built-in filters to control which events are forwarded to which destination. For example:

• To forward only successful payment events to a specific endpoint, you can filter the events by event.type == "charge.success".
• For subscription-related events, you can filter with event.type == "subscription.create" and route them to your other project.

1. Save these settings. Now, Hookdeck will automatically forward specific Paystack events to the right endpoints based on the filters you’ve applied.

5. Testing and Monitoring

Once your routes are set up, it's crucial to test and monitor the webhook events to ensure they’re being routed correctly. Hookdeck offers useful tools to help with this.

Conclusion

That’s all guys, and congrats for getting to the end of the article 🎉. Let me know if you had issues with any part of the code on the comment section. Till next time and Happy coding 😀