Webhook

[Webhooks] allow API consumers to receive notifications about events involving their users (e.g. when a workout has been saved). These notifications may be sent to any secure URL maintained by the consumer, and they are very lightweight—typically no more than some identifying information for the event and a URL to get more information.

Consumers subscribe to these notifications via a simple POST request with some basic information about what kind of event is of interest, the URL to which notifications should be sent, and a secret value (so you can be confident the event came from us).

In order to meet our own performance requirements, we require Webhook subscribers to respond quickly when notified. We expect each notification to be responded to within 3 seconds. See our Tips section below for some advice on how to meet this latency requirement.

Resource URIs

  • Item URI: /v7.0/webhook/{id}/
  • Collection URI: /v7.0/webhook/

How to use Webhooks

Since the notifications we send are lightweight, API consumers should get the latest information available by issuing a GET to the URL included in the notification. The diagram below illustrates the process:

Webhook sequence diagram

In this example, the subscriber is notified some time after the user has saved a workout. (Generally this is done very quickly.) The notification includes three main pieces of information:

  • the notification type (e.g. application.workouts)
  • a URI on which a client can request the latest resource data
  • enough information about the user for you to determine which access token to use when you make subsequent requests

The subscriber must return a response with status code 202 Accepted. This should emphasize that not much work is being done with the notification at the moment of receipt, as subscribers should respond within 3 seconds of receiving a message. This response code and timing is checked on creation and if a timely 202 isn’t received, the webhook creation will fail.

Webhook payload

Below are some example payloads we might send, by subscription type:

application.workouts

[{
    "type": "application.workouts",
    "ts": "2014-05-15T01:51:35.796829+00:00",
    "object_id": "1",
    "_links": {
        "workout": [{
            "href": "\\/v7.0\\/workout\\/1\\/",
            "id": "1"
        }],
        "user": [{
            "href": "\\/v7.0\\/user\\/1\\/",
            "id": "1"
        }]
    }
}]

As with other responses in the MapMyFitness API, we provide an href attribute inside the _links object. This is the URI to call for the latest data on this object.

Note: While you certainly can construct the object’s URI (e.g. /v7.0/workout/1/), we recommend that you use the href value instead. This provides forward compatibility into later (backwards compatible) versions of the API, changes we might implement such as caching parameters, etc. In other words, it helps make your application a good citizen.

Request Headers

Each notification will have 2 headers:

  • content-type The value will be application/json
  • HMAC-Signature The hash signature calculated from your webhook’s shared_secret and the notification’s payload. We use HMAC/SHA-1. You can use this signature to validate the message’s integrity by calculating it on your side and comparing the received value. This validation process is optional.

Python Code example on how to calculate the signature for a given notification payload

import hmac
import hashlib
import json

webhook_shared_secret = 'this_is_a_secret'

notification_data = [{
    "type": "application.workouts",
    "ts": "2014-05-15T01:51:35.796829+00:00",
    "object_id": "1",
    "_links": {
        "workout": [{
            "href": "\\/v7.1\\/workout\\/1\\/",
            "id": "1"
        }],
        "user": [{
            "href": "\\/v7.1\\/user\\/1\\/",
            "id": "1"
        }]
    }
}]

notifications_json_str = json.dumps(notification_data)

signature = hmac.new(webhook_shared_secret, notifications_json_str, digestmod=hashlib.sha1).hexdigest()

print signature  # Calculated hash for this payload is b95fbe0fb0e4b9f2cdb88ffbfc4ddcce0331f9f7

Tips

Responding quickly to a notification

In order to respond as quickly to a notification, subscribers should defer any processing of the notification until after the response is done. You may do this in a few ways, but two popular options are to spawn a new thread to handle the processing, or to place the notification in a queue for later processing. Since you’re likely already using queues for your processing, this is probably your best option.

Under no circumstances should you call the included URL before responding.

Dynamically handling the notification payload

Notification payloads are sent as JSON arrays. This is deliberately done for forward compatibility, as we hope to support batch notifications in the future. As a result, you should loop over the payload and treat each element of it as an individual notification.

Additionally, the payload’s content is determined by the notification type. We recommend you maintain a mapping from the notification’s type to the content. E.g., application.workouts => workout.

Item

Item Methods

  • GET Retrieve a Webhook by ID
  • PUT Update a Webhooks entity

Item properties

Name Description Type HTTP Support
id Webhook ID number GET: required, PUT: required
subscription_type The type of subscription string Required
callback_url The HTTPS URL that will consume notifications generated by the Webhook. string Required
shared_secret A shared secret used to sign outgoing messages text GET: required, PUT: required
status Tells whether active or not text GET: required, PUT: required
created When this Webhook was created DateTime GET: required, PUT: required
last_updated When this Webhook was last updated. DateTime GET: required, PUT: required
last_degraded When the Webhook was last degraded. DateTime GET: required, PUT: required
client_id client ID associated with this Webhook number GET: required, PUT: required

Example Values

subscription_type
Name Description
application.workouts Notifies of changes in workouts

Collection

Collection methods

  • GET Get a list of Webhooks. An optional status can be provided to filter the results by their status. Allowed values are: all, active, degraded, disabled. If no status parameter is given, the list of all Webhook resources with a status different than disabled is returned.
  • POST Create a Webhooks resource. If the resource already exists, a 409 will be returned.

Collection properties

Name Description Type HTTP Support
total_count The total number of Webhooks matching the search parameters specified int GET: required
  • self A link to this resource
  • user A link to the User resource that owns the Webhook

Embedded collections

  • Webhooks A collection of Webhooks with properties as described under Item properties.

Usage

GET Webhook entity

To fetch a single Webhook, make a GET request to /v7.0/webhook/<id>/ where <id> is the id of the Webhook you want to fetch.

Request GET /v7.0/webhook/<id>/
Response
{
    "status": "active",
    "last_updated": "2014-05-08T21:29:14+00:00",
    "subscription_type": "application.workouts",
    "created": "2014-05-08T21:27:49+00:00",
    "last_degraded": "2014-05-08T21:29:04+00:00",
    "client_id": "a_valid_client_id",
    "shared_secret": "this_is_a_shared_secret",
    "_links": {
        "self": [
            {
                "href": "/v7.0/webhook/19/",
                "id": "19"
            }
        ],
        "documentation": [
            {
                "href": "https://developer.mapmyfitness.com/docs/${doc_uri}"
            }
        ]
    },
    "callback_url": "https://example.com/callback",
    "id": 19
}

GET Webhooks collection

To fetch all Webhooks associated with your OAuth client, make a GET request to /v7.0/webhook/.

An optional status querystring parameter can be provided. Accepted values are: all, active, disabled, degraded.

Example: /v7.0/webhook/?status=all will return all the Webhook resources, no matter what their status is (even disabled ones).

Request GET /v7.0/webhook/
Response
{
  "_embedded": {
    "webhooks": [
      {
        "status": "active",
        "last_updated": "2014-05-08T21:29:14+00:00",
        "subscription_type": "application.workouts",
        "created": "2014-05-08T21:27:49+00:00",
        "last_degraded": "2014-05-08T21:29:04+00:00",
        "client_id": "a_valid_client_id",
        "shared_secret": "this_is_a_shared_secret",
        "callback_url": "https://example.com/callback",
        "id": 19
      }
    ]
  },
  "_links": {
    "self": [
      {
        "href": "/v7.0/webhook/?limit=20&offset=0"
      }
    ],
    "documentation": [
      {
        "href": "https://developer.mapmyfitness.com/docs/${doc_uri}"
      }
    ]
  },
  "total_count": 1
}

POST Webhooks entity

To create a Webhook, make a POST request to /v7.0/webhook/.

Note: If an identical webhook subscription already exists (for the same callback url and subscription type), the response code will be 409 Conflict. This means notifications should already be flowing.

Request POST /v7.0/webhook/
{
    "callback_url": "https://example.com/callback",
    "shared_secret": "this_is_a_shared_secret",
    "subscription_type": "application.workouts"
}
Response
{
    "status": "disabled",
    "last_updated": "2014-05-14T16:39:33.151526+00:00",
    "subscription_type": "application.workouts",
    "created": "2014-05-14T16:39:33.151069+00:00",
    "last_degraded": null,
    "client_id": "a_valid_client_id",
    "shared_secret": "this_is_a_shared_secret",
    "_links": {
        "self": [
            {
                "href": "/v7.0/webhook/20/",
                "id": "20"
            }
        ],
        "documentation": [
            {
                "href": "https://developer.mapmyfitness.com/docs/${doc_uri}"
            }
        ]
    },
    "callback_url": "https://example.com/second_callback",
    "id": 20
}

PUT Webhooks entity

Altering existing Webhooks can be done through a PUT request to the item URI. Currently only the status is editable – for other changes disable the existing Webhook and create a new one with the desired properties. The options for status are active, disabled, degraded.

Request PUT /v7.0/webhook/<id>/
{
  "status": "disabled"
}
Response
{
  "status": "disabled",
  "last_updated": "2014-05-14T18:28:43+00:00",
  "subscription_type": "application.workouts",
  "created": "2014-05-08T21:27:49+00:00",
  "last_degraded": "2014-05-08T21:29:04+00:00",
  "client_id": "a_valid_client_id",
  "shared_secret": "this_is_a_shared_secret",
  "_links": {
    "self": [
      {
        "href": "/v7.0/webhook/19/",
        "id": "19"
      }
    ],
    "documentation": [
      {
        "href": "https://developer.mapmyfitness.com/docs/${doc_uri}"
      }
    ]
  },
  "callback_url": "https://example.com/callback",
  "id": 19
}