REST Hooks are fancier versions of webhooks. Traditional webhooks are usually managed manually by the user, but REST Hooks are not! They encourage RESTful access to the hooks (or subscriptions) themselves. Add one, two or 15 hooks for any combination of event and URLs, then get notificatied in real-time by our bundled threaded callback mechanism.
The best part is: by reusing Django's great signals framework, this library is dead simple. Here's how to get started:
- Add
'rest_hooks'to installed apps in settings.py. - Define your
HOOK_EVENTSin settings.py. - Start sending hooks!
Using our built-in actions, zero work is required to support any basic created,
updated, and deleted actions across any Django model. We also allow for
custom actions (IE: beyond CRUD) to be simply defined and triggered
for any model, as well as truly custom events that let you send arbitrary
payloads.
By default, this library will just POST Django's JSON serialization of a model,
but you can alternatively provide a serialize_hook method to customize payloads.
Please note: this package does not implement any UI/API code, it only provides a handy framework or reference implementation for which to build upon. If you want to make a Django form or API resource, you'll need to do that yourself (though we've provided some example bits of code below).
Running the tests for Django REST Hooks is very easy, just:
git clone https://github.com/zapier/django-rest-hooks && cd django-rest-hooks
Next, you'll want to make a virtual environment (we recommend using virtualenvwrapper but you could skip this we suppose) and then install dependencies:
mkvirtualenv django-rest-hooks
pip install -r devrequirements.txt
Now you can run the tests!
python runtests.py
We recommend pip to install Django REST Hooks:
pip install django-rest-hooks
Next, you'll need to add rest_hooks to INSTALLED_APPS and configure
you HOOK_EVENTS setting:
### settings.py ###
INSTALLED_APPS = (
# other apps here...
'rest_hooks',
)
HOOK_EVENTS = {
# 'any.event.name': 'App.Model.Action' (created/updated/deleted)
'book.added': 'bookstore.Book.created',
'book.changed': 'bookstore.Book.updated',
'book.removed': 'bookstore.Book.deleted',
# and custom events, no extra meta data needed
'book.read': None,
'user.logged_in': None
}
### bookstore/models.py ###
class Book(models.Model):
# NOTE: it is important to have a user property
# as we use it to help find and trigger each Hook
user = models.ForeignKey('auth.User')
# maybe user is off a related object, so try...
# user = property(lambda self: self.intermediary.user)
title = models.CharField(max_length=128)
pages = models.PositiveIntegerField()
fiction = models.BooleanField()
# ... other fields here ...
def serialize_hook(self, hook):
# optional, there are serialization defaults
# we recommend always sending the Hook
# metadata along for the ride as well
return {
'hook': hook.dict(),
'data': {
'id': self.id,
'title': self.title,
'pages': self.pages,
'fiction': self.fiction,
# ... other fields here ...
}
}
def mark_as_read(self):
# models can also have custom defined events
from rest_hooks.signals import hook_event
hook_event.send(
sender=self.__class__,
event_name='book.read',
obj=self # the Book object
)For the simplest experience, you'll just piggyback off the standard ORM which will
handle the basic created, updated and deleted signals & events:
>>> from django.contrib.auth.models import User
>>> from rest_hooks.model import Hook
>>> jrrtolkien = User.objects.create(username='jrrtolkien')
>>> hook = Hook(user=jrrtolkien,
event='book.created',
target='http://example.com/target.php')
>>> hook.save() # creates the hook and stores it for later...
>>> from bookstore.models import Book
>>> book = Book(user=jrrtolkien,
title='The Two Towers',
pages=327,
fiction=True)
>>> book.save() # fires off 'bookstore.Book.created' hook automatically
...Now that the book has been created, http://example.com/target.php will get:
POST http://example.com/target.php \
-H Content-Type: application/json \
-d '{"hook": {
"id": 123,
"event": "book.created",
"target": "http://example.com/target.php"},
"data": {
"title": "The Two Towers",
"pages": 327,
"fiction": true}}'
You can continue the example, triggering two more hooks in a similar method. However,
since we have no hooks set up for 'book.changed' or 'book.removed', they wouldn't get
triggered anyways.
...
>>> book.title += ': Deluxe Edition'
>>> book.pages = 352
>>> book.save() # would fire off 'bookstore.Book.updated' hook automatically
>>> book.delete() # would fire off 'bookstore.Book.deleted' hook automaticallyYou can also fire custom events with an arbitrary payload:
from rest_hooks.signals import raw_hook_event
user = User.objects.get(id=123)
raw_hook_event.send(
sender=None,
event_name='user.logged_in',
payload={
'username': user.username,
'email': user.email,
'when': datetime.datetime.now().isoformat()
},
user=user # required: used to filter Hooks
)Django has a stellar signals framework, all
REST Hooks does is register to receive all post_save (created/updated) and post_delete (deleted)
signals. It then filters them down by:
- Which
App.Model.Actionactually have an event registered insettings.HOOK_EVENTS. - After it verifies that a matching event exists, it searches for matching Hooks via the ORM.
- Any Hooks that are found for the User/event combination get sent a payload via POST.
Let's imagine for a second that you've plugged REST Hooks into your API. One could definitely provide a user interface to create hooks themselves via a standard browser & HTML based CRUD interface, but the real magic is when the Hook resource is part of an API.
The basic target functionality is:
POST http://your-app.com/api/hooks?username=me&api_key=abcdef \
-H Content-Type: application/json \
-d '{"target": "http://example.com/target.php",
"event": "book.created"}'
Now, whenever a Book is created (either via an ORM, a Django form, admin, etc...),
http://example.com/target.php will get:
POST http://example.com/target.php \
-H Content-Type: application/json \
-d '{"hook": {
"id": 123,
"event": "book.created",
"target": "http://example.com/target.php"},
"data": {
"title": "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs",
"pages": 657,
"fiction": false}}'
It is important to note that REST Hooks will handle all of this hook callback logic for you automatically.
But you can stop it anytime you like with a simple:
DELETE http://your-app.com/api/hooks/123?username=me&api_key=abcdef
If you already have a REST API, this should be relatively straightforward, but if not, Tastypie is a great choice.
Some reference Tastypie or Django REST framework: + REST Hook code is below.
### resources.py ###
from tastypie.resources import ModelResource
from tastypie.authentication import ApiKeyAuthentication
from tastypie.authorization import Authorization
from rest_hooks.models import Hook
class HookResource(ModelResource):
def obj_create(self, bundle, request=None, **kwargs):
return super(HookResource, self).obj_create(bundle,
request,
user=request.user)
def apply_authorization_limits(self, request, object_list):
return object_list.filter(user=request.user)
class Meta:
resource_name = 'hooks'
queryset = Hook.objects.all()
authentication = ApiKeyAuthentication()
authorization = Authorization()
allowed_methods = ['get', 'post', 'delete']
fields = ['event', 'target']
### urls.py ###
from tastypie.api import Api
v1_api = Api(api_name='v1')
v1_api.register(HookResource())
urlpatterns = patterns('',
(r'^api/', include(v1_api.urls)),
)### serializers.py ###
from rest_framework import serializers
from rest_hooks.models import Hook
class HookSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Hook
read_only_fields = ('user',)
### views.py ###
from rest_framework import viewsets
from rest_hooks.models import Hook
from .serializers import HookSerializer
class HookViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
"""
Retrieve, create, update or destroy webhooks.
"""
model = Hook
serializer_class = HookSerializer
def pre_save(self, obj):
super(HookViewSet, self).pre_save(obj)
obj.user = self.request.user
### urls.py ###
from rest_framework import routers
from . import views
router = routers.SimpleRouter(trailing_slash=False)
router.register(r'webhooks', views.HookViewSet, 'webhook')
urlpatterns = router.urlsInstead of doing blocking HTTP requests inside of signals, we've opted for a simple Threading pool that should handle the majority of use cases.
However, if you use Celery, we'd really recommend using a simple task to handle this instead of threads. A quick example:
### settings.py ###
HOOK_DELIVERER = 'path.to.tasks.deliver_hook_wrapper'
### tasks.py ###
from celery.task import Task
import requests
from django.utils import simplejson as json
class DeliverHook(Task):
def run(self, target, payload, instance=None, hook=None, **kwargs):
"""
target: the url to receive the payload.
payload: a python primitive data structure
instance: a possibly null "trigger" instance
hook: the defining Hook object
"""
requests.post(
url=target,
data=json.dumps(payload),
headers={'Content-Type': 'application/json'}
)
deliver_hook_wrapper = DeliverHook.delayWe also don't handle retries or cleanup. Generally, if you get a 410 or a bunch of 4xx or 5xx, you should delete the Hook and let the user know.