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Getting Started With Node.js
Getting Started With Node.js

Learn how to create a webhook endpoint using Node.js to process webhook events. (Advanced)

Jacob Payne avatar
Written by Jacob Payne
Updated over a week ago

Introduction

Here’s a real-world example that walks you through getting started using webhooks in action with your data. For someone with programming experience, it should be quick to set up. This example uses Node.js to build a script to process webhook events.

Prerequisites

This guide assumes you have:

The Plan

An overview of the steps we’ll be working through:

  • Deploy a simple Node.js application to Heroku

  • Create a webhook in Fulcrum to use this application

  • Create an app with data in Fulcrum

  • Check that we see event requests from our Fulcrum app in the logs on Heroku

Deploy a Node.js Application to Heroku

About Heroku

Heroku is a platform for hosting applications in the cloud. They’re well-known service and have good guides for new users. It’s possible to deploy a small application to Heroku for free. That’s what we’re working toward.

First, you’ll need a Heroku account. Follow the steps in their quick start guide to create an account, install the Heroku toolbelt, and log in to your account using the toolbelt.

Deploy the Application

In the course of building the webhooks functionality, we created an application for testing. It’s called polis.js. The application receives HTTP POST requests and writes the contents to STDOUT. It’s the application we’ll set up as a webhook endpoint.

In your terminal:

  1. Navigate to a directory where you want to keep the source code

  2. git clone https://github.com/fulcrumapp/polis.js.git 

  3. cd polis.js 

  4. heroku create 

  5. git push heroku master 

  6. heroku domains - Remember the output from here since it will be the URL of the webhook we create next

Test the Application

In your terminal:

  1. heroku open 

This will open the site in your browser. The page should say polis.js is running.

Create a Webhook in Fulcrum to use this Application

In your browser:

  1. Log into your account on Fulcrum

  2. Click the cog in the upper right of the page

  3. Click Settings 

  4. If you were in another organization, on the left menu, click the name of the organization you’re interested in

  5. Click API Webhooks  in the list of links for that org’s settings

  6. Click Add Webhook 

  7. Enter polis.js  as the webhook’s name

  8. Enter your heroku application’s URL as the webhook’s URL- This is the output from the heroku domains  command above

  9. Click Save Webhook 

Create an App with Data in Fulcrum

Now that the webhook has been created, we can start using it.

Create a new app and a record within Fulcrum. Since we have an active webhook within our organization, an event is created for both the form and record we made. Each event generates requests for each of the webhooks in our org. Since we only have one webhook now, one request is made for the form and one for the record. Those requests are made to the webhook’s URL automatically. So now, we should expect that our Node.js app has received the requests. And we can check that next.

Check that We See those Event Requests in the Logs on Heroku

Now, let’s check out the application on Heroku to make sure it received the webhook event requests.

In the terminal:

  1. Navigate back to the polis.js folder, if necessary

  2. heroku logs

  3. At the bottom of the output from the above command, you should see a JSON payload of the event data from the POST request

Example of a record.create event payload:

view rawwebhook-payload.zsh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Note that one caveat of these logs is that they might not be in order. You’ll see that some of the lines won’t appear in the order the application actually wrote them out. But the logs do still show that we received the webhook event request.

Conclusion

We’ve successfully set up a webhook endpoint, created a webhook in Fulcrum, and seen how they are connected.

Give yourself a pat on the back!

Next Step

Now, you can check out the Webhooks Developer Documentation and begin building more sophisticated applications to extend Fulcrum!

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