Webhooks

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Overview

Usually, when an application wants to consume information from another it makes a request to obtain such information.

Webhooks turn this around: the producer of information calls the consumer when data is available. This way, the consumer doesn’t have to poll the producer regularly to obtain information.

Metriport will call your app’s webhook endpoint when user data is available - there’s no way for your application to request data exposed through webhooks.

To enable this integration approach with Metriport:

1. Expose a public endpoint on your app;
2. Set this endpoint URL on the Developers page in the developer dashboard, or via the Update Settings endpoint;
3. This will generate a webhook key that should be used to authenticate requests on your app’s endpoint (webhook).

General requirements for the endpoint:

1. Public endpoint accessible from the internet;
2. Accepts a POST HTTP request;
3. Verifies requests by comparing the HTTP header x-webhook-key with the webhook key;
4. Accepts and responds to a ping message;

Additionally, depending on what Metriport APIs you’re using, your endpoint will need to accept and process different messages when they become available - specifically:

1. If using the Devices API - accept and process user data messages.
2. If using the Medical API - accept and process patient data messages.

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Authentication

Validate requests to your public endpoint by comparing the webhook key with each request’s HTTP header.

The webhook key is accessible on Developers page in the developer dashboard, or via the Get Settings endpoint - see how to enable webhooks on the overview section.

The HTTP header will contain a header named x-webhook-key - it should contain the webhook key mentioned above. Your app is expected to disregard requests if those don’t match. We suggest returning a HTTP status code 401 with no body in such cases.

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Generating a new webhook key

If using the dashboard: simply delete your webhook URL on the Developers page, save, and enter it again.

If using the API: set the webhook URL to an empty string via the Update Settings endpoint, and then set it to your desired URL making another request to the same endpoint.

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Format

Webhook requests contain the relevant information on the body of the HTTP request.

There are three types of messages you can expect to receive:

• ping: validation of the webhook connection between Metriport and your app;
• user data: health information grouped by user (Devices API only).
• patient data: patient document information (Medical API only).

In general, upon successful receiving of these messages, it’s expected that your app responds with a 200 HTTP status code (OK).

There’s no need to include anything on the response body.

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The ping message

This is a simple message to validate access to your app’s webhook endpoint. Your app should accept a POST request with this body…

{
  "ping": "<random-sequence>"
}

…and respond to this request by sending back the <random-sequence> as below:

{
  "pong": "<random-sequence>"
}

You can check the webhook mock server available on our repository for a simple implementation of this message.

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Devices API messages

When using the Devices API, Metriport will send Webhook messages containing user data to your app from connected Providers, as soon as the data becomes available.

You can see Webhook details specific to the Devices API on this page.

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Medical API messages

When using the Medical API, Metriport will send Webhook messages containing patient document data to your app, as soon as the data becomes available after initiating a document query.

You can see Webhook details specific to the Medical API on this page.

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Retries

Sometimes, due to temporary network distruption (or whatever other reason), a Webhook payload may fail to be delivered to your app. In these cases, Metriport will store the failed requests, and then you can then manually retry them - using either the dashboard, or the API.

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Retry Using the Dashboard

On the Developers page in the dashboard, you’re able to see the count of Webhook requests currently processing, and a count of outstanding ones that failed:

To retry failed requests, simply click the Retry button, and those requests will be sent to your app again.

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Retry Using the API

1. Using the Get Webhook Status endpoint, check to see if there are any failed requests;
2. Then, use the Retry Webhook requests endpoint, to kick off the retry.