Webhook question

[dejantep]

I'm trying to learn how to use webhooks and i have created one as simple as possible, no body, basically just url and type create on dcim > site

When i create a site shouldn't i be able to see something under job results? i have nothing.
Dokumentation states following webhook events are being placed into the queue (visible under the NetBox admin UI)

[candlerb]

Look under "Background tasks". "Job results" are for scripts and reports.

Otherwise: is the webhook enabled? What Netbox version? Do you have netbox-rq running?

It works for me. Tested with Netbox 3.0.7:

• Other > Webhooks > +
• Name: foo
• Content types: DCIM > Site
• Type: Create (checked)
• URL: http://localhost:1234/
• Create

Now create a site:

• Organization > Sites > +
• Name: bar
• Create

Now look at webhook status:

• Admin > Admin
• Background tasks
  
• Click on the 1 under Failed Jobs
  
• Click on the job ID
  

[dejantep]

Thank you very much. Now i see what i'm missing. Menu choice "Background jobs" is only available when i'm on netbox administration home screen. If i go to webhooks, option is not there.

Another question...is secret field used to authenticate against target server or do i put that info in header section?

[candlerb]

It's documented here:

Secret - A secret string used to prove authenticity of the request (optional). This will append a X-Hook-Signature header to the request, consisting of a HMAC (SHA-512) hex digest of the request body using the secret as the key.

That is, in your webserver you can calculate a HMAC(secret key, request body) and check that it matches the X-Hook-Signature header. If it doesn't match, the request is not authentic. Here is some sample code.

If you only want to provide a static password, then it can go in "additional headers". In that case, you really want to make sure the connection is protected via TLS (i.e. the target provides a HTTPS URL, with a valid certificate)

[dejantep]

Great. Thanks for the help

[dejantep]

I would like to continue with another question instead of starting new thread.

One thing i dont get yet is accessing data context that is "two levels deep" for instance region of a site.
It is dict within data context and cannot be accessed like {{ data.region }}

How would i do that?

[candlerb]

The webhook body template lets you control the data sent. It can expand nested attributes. The easiest place to play with this is is the netbox shell so you can test the attributes interactively. (Jinja2 isn't python, but it's similar)

Alternatively, your webhook receiver can make a call back to the REST API (or the graphql API in 3.0) to get additional data.

[djgregor]

@dejantep I know this is an old thread, but I'm curious if you ever found a way to send the region field. It sounds like our use case is similar to yours -- we're attempting to send site.name (address), region (city), and site-group (market/office, in our case).

Interestingly, we can send data.site.region and data.site.group, but the payload for both is empty. Alternatively, if we can't achieve this cleanly with a body template, we're considering directing the webhook to trigger a local python script that could extract and forward all relevant data (definitely something we'd like to avoid though). As a last resort, it looks like we could use custom fields for both region and site-group.

[dejantep]

Hello,
yes i found a way. Here is my webhook template. Hope it helps.

{
"name": "{{data.name}}",
"description": "{{data.description}}",
"placement": "{{data.facility}}",
"attributes": {
"Area": "{{data.region['name']}}",
"Street": "{{data.physical_address}}",
"NB-id": "{{data.id}}"
},
"longitude": "{{data.longitude}}",
"latitude": "{{data.latitude}}"
}

[dejantep]

I tried to start nbshell but with no success. Getting Django missing module error.
cd /opt/netbox/netbox
./manage.py nbshell

[dejantep]

yes i have changed system default python3 version to 3.7.5 through "update-alternatives"
I'm not sure it broke anything but i understand your point.
But if my venv is using 3.6.9 and venv purpose is to have specific environment for a project how would changing system default python3 version break that?

[candlerb]

I can't login to your system, so all I can tell you is that it's broken if you can't run nbshell. I'm offering my best guess as to why it's broken.

[dejantep]

i just changed it back to 3.6.9 and nbshell is working as expected. 👍 Thank you for this.

[dejantep]

Does this mean when i go for netbox v3.0 and create new venv with python3.7 i need to change system default python3 to 3..7.5 aswell?

[candlerb]

No.

If you want to stick with Ubuntu 18.04, then when you install netbox v3 you'll need to do

PYTHON=python3.7 ./upgrade.sh

instead of just ./upgrade.sh and it will build the venv with the right version of python. (python3.8 is also available for Ubuntu 18.04, that's what I use). The system default remains as python3.6.

Alternatively, you could migrate to Ubuntu 20.04. This is straightforward if you're using VMs: build a new VM with v3, export the database from the old, import into the new, job done.