| Sania Uzair
What are webhooks?
Webhooks are one of several techniques for web apps to interact with one another. It lets you transfer real-time data from one application to another if a specific event happens.
Assume you've built an app that uses the API to detect when people visit your business. When they check in, you should be able to greet them by name and offer them a complementary drink.
The data is then delivered over the internet from the application where the event takes place to the receiving application that will process it.
A "webhook URL" is used to communicate data over the internet.
The receiving application provides a webhook URL, which works as a phone number that the other application can call when an event occurs.
The only difference is that instead of a phone number, data about the event is delivered to the webhook URL in JSON or XML format. The "payload" is the term for this.
Azure Logic Apps and Power Automate both allow you to use webhooks as triggers. A logic app or flow listens for this trigger and performs an action whenever the trigger fires
API Vs Webhooks:
- Application Programming Interface (API) is a software middleman that allows two apps to communicate with one another. In other words, an API is a messenger that sends your request to the provider and then returns the response to you. Webhook, also known as a reverse API, web callback, or an HTTP push API, is a means for one app to give real-time information to other apps. It sends data as soon as an event occurs, or very quickly.
- APIs are request-based, which means they only work when third-party apps send them requests. Webhooks are event-based, which means they'll fire off when a certain event in the source app occurs.
- The primary difference is that webhooks do not require a request to receive a response, whereas APIs require requests to receive a response. Webhooks, on the other hand, receive data, whereas APIs retrieve it.
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