This page provides you with instructions on how to extract data from Webhooks and load it into Amazon S3. (If this manual process sounds onerous, check out Stitch, which can do all the heavy lifting for you in just a few clicks.)
What are webhooks?
A webhook is a way for one application to provide other applications with real-time information. Webhooks send data through user-defined HTTP POST callbacks, which means an application that uses webhooks can POST data when an event occurs to a specified endpoint (web address).
What is S3?
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) provides cloud-based object storage through a web service interface. You can use S3 to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. S3 objects, which may be structured in any way, are stored in resources called buckets.
Getting data out of webhooks
Different applications have different ways to set up webhooks. Often, you can use a management console to define the webhook and specify the endpoint to which you want data delivered. You must make sure that the specified endpoint exists on your server.
What does webhook data look like?
Webhooks post data to your specified endpoints in JSON format. It's up to you to parse the JSON objects and decide how to load them into your data warehouse.
Loading data into Amazon S3
To upload files you must first create an S3 bucket. Once you have a bucket you can add an object to it. An object can be any kind of file: a text file, data file, photo, or anything else. You can optionally compress or encrypt the files before you load them.
Keeping data from webhooks up to date
Once you've set up the webhooks you want and have begun collecting data, you can relax – as long as everything continues to work correctly. You have to keep an eye on any changes your applications make to the data they deliver. You should also watch out for cases where your script doesn't recognize a new data type. And since you'll be responsible for maintaining your script, every time your users want slightly different information, you'll have to modify the script.
Other data warehouse options
S3 is great, but sometimes you want a more structured repository that can serve as a basis for BI reports and data analytics — in short, a data warehouse. Some folks choose to go with Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, PostgreSQL, Snowflake, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, or Panoply, which are RDBMSes that use similar SQL syntax. If you're interested in seeing the relevant steps for loading data into one of these platforms, check out To Redshift, To BigQuery, To Postgres, To Snowflake, To Azure Synapse Analytics, and To Panoply.
Easier and faster alternatives
If all this sounds a bit overwhelming, don’t be alarmed. If you have all the skills necessary to go through this process, chances are building and maintaining a script like this isn’t a very high-leverage use of your time.
Thankfully, products like Stitch were built to move data from Webhooks to Amazon S3 automatically. With just a few clicks, Stitch starts extracting your Webhooks data, structuring it in a way that's optimized for analysis, and inserting that data into your Amazon S3 data warehouse.