resources.webhooks.webhook definition
A webhook resource enables you to integrate your pipeline with an external service to automate the workflow.
webhooks:
- webhook: string # Required as first property. Name of the webhook.
connection: string # Required. Name of the connection. In case of offline webhook this will be the type of Incoming Webhook otherwise it will be the type of the webhook extension.
type: string # Name of the webhook extension. Leave this empty if it is an offline webhook.
filters: [ filter ] # List of trigger filters.
Definitions that reference this definition: resources.webhooks
Properties
webhook string. Required as first property.
Name of the webhook. Acceptable values: [-_A-Za-z0-9]*.
For Azure DevOps webhook, webhook must always be a WebHook.
connection string. Required.
Name of the connection. In case of offline webhook this will be the type of Incoming Webhook otherwise it will be the type of the webhook extension.
type string.
Name of the webhook extension. Leave this empty if it is an offline webhook.
filters resources.webhooks.webhook.filters.
List of trigger filters.
Examples
Basic example
You can define your pipeline as follows.
resources:
webhooks:
- webhook: WebHook
connection: IncomingWH
steps:
- script: echo ${{ parameters.WebHook.resource.message.title }}
To trigger your pipeline using the webhook, you need to make a POST request to https://dev.azure.com/<org_name>/_apis/public/distributedtask/webhooks/<WebHook Name>?api-version=6.0-preview.
The WebHook Name must match that of the Incoming WebHook Service Connection.
This endpoint is publicly available, and no authorization is needed. The request should have the following body.
{
"resource": {
"message": {
"title": "Hello, world!",
"subtitle": "I'm using WebHooks!"
}
}
}
When you access data from the webhook's request body, be mindful that it may lead to incorrect YAML. For example, if in the previous pipeline, your step reads - script: echo ${{ parameters.WebHook.resource.message }}, and you trigger the pipeline via a webhook, the pipeline doesn't run. This is because in the process of replacing ${{ parameters.WebHook.resource.message.title }} with message, which contains the following JSON, the generated YAML becomes invalid.
{
"title": "Hello, world!",
"subtitle": "I'm using WebHooks!"
}
Because the generated YAML becomes invalid, no pipeline run is queued in response.
Prevent unauthorized pipeline runs
Webhooks allow anyone to trigger your pipeline, as long as they know the names of your organization and webhook service connection.
You can prevent unauthorized pipeline runs by defining a secret when creating an Incoming Webhook service connection. You need to also specify the name of HTTP header that contains the SHA-1 checksum of the webhook's body.
To verify that an incoming webhook REST API call is authorized, Azure Pipelines computes the SHA-1 checksum of the request's body using the secret as key. It then compares it to the checksum passed in the request header. This way, the caller proves they know the secret.
Let's look at an example. Say you configured an Incoming Webhook service connection named IncomingWH, specified the secret is secret, and that the checksum is sent in the HTTP header named X-WH-Checksum. Imagine you have a pipeline that defines a Webhook resource.
Say you want to trigger the pipeline using the following request body:
{"resource":{"message":{"title":"Hello, world!","subtitle":"I'm using WebHooks!"}}}
To do this, you need to make a POST request to https://dev.azure.com/<org_name>/_apis/public/distributedtask/webhooks/IncomingWH?api-version=6.0-preview and add the X-WH-Checksum header with the value of 750D33212D3AD4932CC390819050734831A0A94F. You do not need to specify any username & password or any other type of authentication information.
Azure Pipelines will independently compute the SHA-1 checksum of the body using secret as key and will generate the same 750D33212D3AD4932CC390819050734831A0A94F value. Since the values match, the call is authorized, and pipeline queueing proceeds.
You compute the value of the X-WH-Checksum header, in pseudocode, as SHA1(secret).ComputeHash(requestBody). You can use .NET's System.Security.Cryptography.HMACSHA1 class for this purpose.
To prevent validation failures due to new lines or whitespaces, we recommend you send the body in a minimized form. That is, send
{"resource":{"message":{"title":"Hello, world!","subtitle":"I'm using WebHooks!"}}}
instead of
{
"resource": {
"message": {
"title": "Hello, world!",
"subtitle": "I'm using WebHooks!"
}
}
}
Even though the two JSON objects above represent the same object, they generate different SHA-1 checksums. This is because SHA-1 is computed on their string representation, which is different.