Responding to a webhook event with raw data

Question

I'd like to write a ruleset that can respond to webhook events with raw data. The event might come in from a URL like the following:

http://cs.kobj.net/blue/event/rest/echo/a163x85/?a163x85:kynetx_app_version=dev&body=hi%20there

I can use the send_directive() action, but that returns a lot of JSON that I don't necessarily want:

// KNS Fri Apr  8 19:40:40 2011
{"directives":[{"options":{"body":"hi there"},"name":"echo","meta":{"rule_name":"echo","txn_id":"154CEDCC-6218-11E0-9E71-726A5E50CE3F","rid":"a163x85"}}]}

Is there a way to respond with just raw data, rather than with a whole directive structure?

Answer 1

The answer is to use the Webhook Endpoint to interact with KNS, not directly signal an event.

You would signal your event like so:

http://webhooks.kynetxapps.net/h/a163x85.dev/echo?body=hi%20there

And a rule like so:

rule x {
  select when webhook echo
  pre {
    body = event:param("body");
    response = { 'thebody': body };
    rjson = response.encode();
  }
  send_directive("json") with body = rjson;
}

For a response like:

{"thebody":"hi there"}

Note the .dev in the URL for indicating the dev version of the app, echo as the event name, and the event domain of webhook .

The endpoint will even serve it with the proper mime/type for json.

Also note you can return html, xml, js, plain text, and even a redirect. Check the Webhook Endpoint Docs for more details.