Add Webhooks

[mlemainque]

Hello,

I am willing to sync Cliniko's appointments with my own booking service (in both directions Cliniko -> My service, My service -> Cliniko) through your API. For the sake of scalability, I would like to avoid dumping your API every X minutes looking for updates in appointments but only when an update has occured.

That's why webhooks would be very useful for me as Cliniko's API would notifies my service each time an appointment is updated in Cliniko. Unfortunately I can't see any mention of webhooks in your documentation. Do you have ones?

It could a very simple feature: a new /webhooks REST endpoint in your API, each webhook having a few properties:

• url (in my case "https://myservice.com/cliniko-webhook")
• resource_type (in my case "appointment")
• expiration_date (optionally)

Thanks in advance,

[bpinto]

@mlemainque we don't support webhooks just yet. But as it's something we will work on in the future, how do you think that expiration_date would work?

[mlemainque]

@bpinto expiration_date avoids you to ping very old dead URLs

When somebody creates a webhook through your API, you provide them an expiration date (for example 1 week from now). You can leave the webhooks renewal issue to the user: each X days he can DELETE old webhooks and POST new ones

You may take a look at how Google does it: https://developers.google.com/google-apps/calendar/v3/push

[hagen]

+1

[rocface]

+1

[craigharman]

+1

[elidhu]

+1

[hagen]

For my own software, I've adopted the REST Hooks approach.
This is a subscription-based model, where the callee would subscribe to a hook type from Cliniko (the caller). Subscriptions can then be deleted by the callee as required - it's a fully API-centric approach.

[alecwills]

Any chance of an update on this? It's been over 2 years since "we will work on this in the future"! Prehaps you don't have that many clients using the API but I'm polling it very regularly and putting load on your servers because you don't have webhooks. The only workaround for me is for appointments since I sync to a Mailchimp list (one of your integrations) and they do support webhooks I use their service to trigger a poll on yours. This doesn't work for other endpoints and requires Mailchimp which doesn't suit everyone.

[jfriedlaender]

Hi Alec, We have plenty of businesses using our API, and the reduced load from webhooks would benefit us greatly. That said, with finite development resource, we prioritise as best we can, and this hasn’t hit the top of our list yet. Unfortunately I still have the same answer right now, we will do this, I don’t know the timeframe yet. Joel

…

On 8 May 2019, 9:56 AM +1000, Alec Wills ***@***.***>, wrote: Any chance of an update on this? It's been over 2 years since "we will work on this in the future"! Prehaps you don't have that many clients using the API but I'm polling it very regularly and putting load on your servers because you don't have webhooks. The only workaround for me is for appointments since I sync to a Mailchimp list (one of your integrations) and they do support webhooks I use their service to trigger a poll on yours. This doesn't work for other endpoints and requires Mailchimp which doesn't suit everyone. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[jkairys]

+1

Any news on this?

[hagen]

Nothing further yet folks, sorry. It'll happen, but we can't say when.

[joeainsworth]

Any update?

[JohnColvin]

sorry @joeainsworth nothing to report. no one is actively working on webhooks at the moment.

[alecwills]

Just thought I'd let you guys know that you are loosing customers over this. We moved away from Cliniko about a year ago, not just for this but it was a big factor. We're not super happy with whom we moved to and would consider moving back to Cliniko, however, when I compare the changes you have made with the lack of progress on this I'm not convinced that your development priorities are right! Obviously this view is based on limited information but I thought you might like to know you are loosing actual money by not addressing this and you leave me, and clearly some others, perplexed why something has sat on your list for so many years without being elevated or removed! I rather suspect the lack of comments on this thread doesn't reflect the number of potential customers who when evaluating your API just reject Cliniko because this feature is missing! But what do I know I'm just one ex-customer.