# Strider — Configure and Use Webhooks

This series about Strider guides you through the setup process of various use cases to connect Strider and other software platforms like GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket, Slack, Heroku, HipChat, and so on.

Besides the defined data flow between Strider and those apps, you can use webhooks to request a specific url once the build process finished. Additionally, you can define the data and format of your request’s payload.

## Install Strider-Webhooks Plugin

Strider provides the strider-webhooks plugin within its ecosystem index. You can install the plugin straight from the admin panel’s plugin overview.

Search for Web Hooks and make sure the plugin is installed. If not, click the Install button.

## Configure Strider-Webhooks for Strider Project

Head over to the project’s settings page. Click the plugin link in the left sidebar. Now drag & drop the Webhooks card from Available Plugins to Active Plugins. A new link called Webhooks will appear within the left sidebar once you dropped the card into the available plugins list.

Click the newly created Webhooks link in the sidebar to open the detailed settings page for webhooks on this project.

You need to fill at least the value for TargetURL for HTTP Post to make the plugin work. It will send a HTTP POST request to your defined url and by default add a request body in a given format.

Configuration options:

- Hook Title: identifier to distinct differnt web hooks
- TargetURL for HTTP Post: destination url for the POST request
- Shared secret for HMAC-SHA1 signature: add this for security. You don’t need to add the `sha1=` prefix. The plugin handles it for you. Just provide your shared secret.
- Custom payload format: this doesn’t work in plugin version 0.1.2. This issue will be fixed in later version (for sure), but currently you cannot specify your prefered format for the request payload.

Once you provided your values, click Save Hooks to persist the branch specific information in the database.

### Payload Data

The payload data is based on a Strider job. You can find the job format within its Mongoose model definition. Additionally, have a look at the `project` model, it integrates with the `job` model, too.

The default format looks like this:

    {
      // job data
      project: ‚job.project.name‘,
      commit_id: ‚job.ref.id‘,
      branch: ‚job.ref.branch‘,
      repo_url: ‚job.project.provider.config.url‘,
      // results
      test_exitcode: ‚data.exitCode‘,
      finish_time: ‚data.time‘
    }

While inspecting the values, you may think they look like object accessors. And you’re right. The values are parsed and used to access the provided `job` data. This way, you can use access the provided information of any Strider job.

### Default Request Payload

The Strider Webhooks plugins adds a request payload by default. The payload data could look like this (based on the above shown default format):

    {
       payload: '{
        "project":"fs-opensource/hapi-rethinkdb-dash",
        "branch":"master",
        "repo_url":"git://github.com/fs-opensource/hapi-rethinkdb-dash.git",
        "test_exitcode":0,
        "finish_time":"2015-05-18T08:06:04.824Z"
      }'
    }

The payload data is sent as query parameters with the POST request. You may need to parse it for further operations.

### Custom Payload Format

You can define a different format of your payload data and use it insteand of the default one. You can use any job object property for your webhook data. Define the accessor as a value for your format property key. Have a look at the Payload Data paragraph for more information about the format configuration options.

Remember: the current version 0.1.2 doesn’t support the definition of any custom payload format. This will be fixed in future versions.

## Test Webhooks Integration

That’s it. The configuration is done and we can use the webhook right away. Hit the Retest button and start the build run. Once the integration finishes, the webhook gets fired.

The webhook plugin prints a line (colored purple) at the bottom of the test phase. It uses the provided hook title as and identifier.

    # Firing webhook <hook-title>

#### Additional Ressources

- Strider-Webhooks-Plugin
- Strider Job Model
- Strider Project Model