GithubWebhook

This gem will help you to quickly setup a route in your Rails application which listens to a GitHub webhook

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'github_webhook', '~> 1.0.4'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

Configuration

First, configure a route to receive the github webhook POST requests.

# config/routes.rb
resource :github_webhooks, only: :create, defaults: { formats: :json }

Then create a new controller:

# app/controllers/github_webhooks_controller.rb
class GithubWebhooksController < ActionController::Base
  include GithubWebhook::Processor

  # Handle push event
  def github_push(payload)
    # TODO: handle push webhook
  end

  # Handle create event
  def github_create(payload)
    # TODO: handle create webhook
  end

  def webhook_secret(payload)
    ENV['GITHUB_WEBHOOK_SECRET']
  end
end

Add as many instance methods as events you want to handle in your controller.

All events are prefixed with github_. So, a push event can be handled by github_push(payload), or a create event can be handled by github_create(payload), etc.

You can read the full list of events GitHub can notify you about.

Adding the Webhook to your git repository:

First, install octokit, then run a rails console.

$ gem install octokit
$ rails console

In the rails console, add the WebHook to GitHub:

require "octokit"
client = Octokit::Client.new(:login => 'ssaunier', :password => 's3cr3t!!!')

repo = "ssaunier/github_webhook"
callback_url = "yourdomain.com/github_webhooks"
webhook_secret = "a_gr34t_s3cr3t"  # Must be set after that in ENV['GITHUB_WEBHOOK_SECRET']

# Create the WebHook
client.subscribe "https://github.com/#{repo}/events/push.json", callback_url, webhook_secret

The secret is set at the webhook creation. Store it in an environment variable, GITHUB_WEBHOOK_SECRET as per the example. It is important to have such a secret, as it will guarantee that your process legit webhooks requests, thus only from GitHub.

You can have an overview of your webhooks at the following URL:

https://github.com/:username/:repo/settings/hooks