Webhooks are an advanced feature intended for users with development or API configuration experience. As this is an advanced feature, Quickbase Technical Support cannot debug webhook messages or interactions with third-party systems. Below is some information on resources and tips on debugging webhooks.
What can Quickbase Technical Support help with?
- Review and help troubleshoot webhook trigger criteria.
- Explain the Quickbase API, such as authentication requirements or what calls can be used for your solution.
- Review and help you troubleshoot Webhooks calls to Quickbase in XML format.
How to avoid infinite loops
There may situations when you want to update the table that originally triggered the webhook. For example, you want to immediately update a field value when some other field value changes. In this case there is a real risk that the webhook could re-trigger itself, thus creating an infinite loop. Take care to define your filter conditions so that self-reference is not possible. Loops can be destructive and can even flood it with traffic and data until limits are hit.
Check for errors from receiving endpoint
Quickbase logs any HTTP failure status codes from the receiving end point to help you debug. If your webhook gets an error response, we’ll send you, the webhook owner, an email right away so you can investigate. Don’t worry — we won’t flood your inbox. If there are multiple errors for the same webhook within the same hour, we'll send an hourly summary, rather than an alert for each error. We'll email the current owner of the webhook, so make sure the webhook owner is the person who needs to be notified in case of an error.
To view errors from all webhooks, click the View error history link in the upper right of the webhook management page. From here you can view a list with errors from the last 30 days. The table displays the Webhook name, the Run time, the Response code, and the Message returned. You can also search the error history to filter the list.
Common response codes include:
- 400 Bad Request - This the most common error code, often due to missing required values or similar semantic problems, and used for Quickbase API authentication failures.
- 401 Unauthorized - Authentication on the server failed (note: not used by the Quickbase API).
- 402 Request Failed - Parameters were valid but request failed.
- 404 Not Found - The requested item doesn't exist.
- 500 Internal Server Error.
Check for outbound limit errors
You may receive an alert and email notification if you have reached one of the webhooks limits such as Message Size or Rate Limit. See the Webhooks FAQ for more information.
Inspect the request
Is your webhook not being sent or are you receiving errors? This is usually caused by conflicts in your filter criteria, not understanding how the Quickbase API works, or mistakes in your payload. For troubleshooting this, we recommend an app like RequestBin. RequestBin doesn't try to interpret the payloads, it just prints them to your screen as it receives them, making it easy to see what is going on. Just click the Create a Request button on their homepage and copy the provided link. For example:
http://requestb.in/18e5uxn3
Now, change the webhook's Endpoint URL to the new Requestb.in URL (you must replace "http" with "https"). Then, take the steps necessary to trigger the webhook once again (usually creating a record of some type). After you do that, simply refresh your Requestb.in page and take a look.