Receiving Webhooks

GitHub webhooks are triggered for various significant actions on GitHub, such as pushing code, opening or closing issues, merging pull requests, and commenting on discussions.

As a Probot app developer, you can listen for these events and automate responses to them. The app.on method allows your app to subscribe to specific GitHub webhook events and execute logic accordingly.

Listening to Webhook Events

To handle a webhook event, use app.on(eventName, callback). The context object contains all relevant details about the event, including the payload sent by GitHub.

Example: Handling a Push Event

export default (app) => {
  app.on("push", async (context) => {
    // Code was pushed to the repository
    app.log.info("Received push event", context.payload);
  });
};

Filtering by Action Type

Many events include an action property that specifies what happened. For example, the issues event supports actions like opened, closed, and edited. You can listen for a specific action by appending it to the event name:

export default (app) => {
  app.on("issues.opened", async (context) => {
    app.log.info("An issue was just opened", context.payload);
  });
};

Listening to Multiple Events

To handle multiple webhook events with the same logic, pass an array of event names:

export default (app) => {
  app.on(["issues.opened", "issues.edited"], async (context) => {
    app.log.info("An issue was opened or edited", context.payload);
  });
};

Catching All Subscribed Events

To log all received webhook events, use app.onAny():

export default (app) => {
  app.onAny(async (context) => {
    app.log.info({ event: context.name, action: context.payload.action });
  });
};

Further Reading

• GitHub Webhook Events
• Probot Webhook API
• @octokit/webhooks.js

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