How to Send Community Events to Other Apps in BuddyNext

How to send community events to other apps from BuddyNext with outbound webhooks, step by step. Turn on Outbound webhooks under BuddyNext, then Platform, then Features, then open Platform, then Webhooks. Under Outbound endpoints, enter an HTTPS address, tick the events to forward (such as New member registered or New post created) and click Register endpoint. BuddyNext shows the endpoint's signing secret once: copy it into the receiving service, which uses it to verify the X-BuddyNext-Signature header. Each endpoint has Send test, View log and Remove. An endpoint that fails three times in a row is disabled, and its row then has a Re-enable button.

Transcript

In this tutorial you will send community events to other apps from BuddyNext. This is done with outbound webhooks. BuddyNext posts a small signed message to an address you choose. You need BuddyNext, the free plugin, and a service that can receive webhooks. You need to be a site administrator. It takes about three minutes. There are five steps. Turn on Outbound webhooks. Open the Webhooks screen. Add an endpoint. Copy the signing secret. Then check the deliveries. Step one. Turn on Outbound webhooks. In the WordPress admin, open BuddyNext, Platform, then Features. Scroll to the row named Outbound webhooks. It is off on a new site. Turn the switch on, then click Save changes at the foot of the page. Step two. Open the Webhooks screen. It is in the same Platform menu. The first box, Inbound access webhook, is for requests coming in to your site. This tutorial is about the second. Scroll to Outbound endpoints. An endpoint is the address of a service that should hear about events in your community. Each request is a small piece of JSON, with the event, a timestamp and the data. It carries a signature header, so the receiver can check it came from you. Step three. Add an endpoint. In New endpoint URL, paste the address your other service gave you. It must begin with h t t p s. Under Events to forward, tick what that service should hear about. New member registered, and New post created, for example. Tick nothing, and every event is sent. The free plugin holds one endpoint. BuddyNext Pro removes that limit, and adds the four membership events at the end of the list. Step four. Copy the signing secret. Under the events, click Register endpoint. The endpoint is stored at once. BuddyNext then shows the signing secret for this endpoint. Copy it, and store it in the receiving service. It is shown this one time only. The receiver uses the secret to check the signature on every request. When it is stored, click Done, I have copied it. Step five. Check the deliveries. Your endpoint is now a row in the table, with its events, its status, and its buttons. Send test posts a ping to the endpoint, so you can see it arrive. View log opens the delivery log under the row. Nothing has been sent to this endpoint yet, so its log is empty. A failed delivery is tried again. After three failures in a row, the endpoint is switched off, and the site administrator is sent an email. Its status then reads Disabled, the badge you see here. A disabled row has one more button, Re-enable. Fix the receiving service, then click it to switch the endpoint back on. Remove, at the end of the row, deletes the endpoint and its log. It asks you to confirm first. That is all five. Outbound webhooks turned on, the Webhooks screen opened, an endpoint added, the signing secret copied, and the deliveries checked. Your other tools can now hear what happens in your community. Next in this series: Use BuddyNext with Jetonomy.