IFTTT Foxx Example Webhook

This Foxx service demonstrates using Foxx for an applet action in IFTTT.

Installing the service

This example service can be installed using the ArangoDB web interface or the Foxx CLI:

$ npm install --global foxx-cli
$ foxx install -u root -P -H http://localhost:8529 -D _system /myfoxx https://github.com/arangodb-foxx/ifttt-example/archive/master.zip

# or without installing foxx-cli:

$ npx foxx-cli install -u root -P -H http://localhost:8529 -D _system /myfoxx https://github.com/arangodb-foxx/ifttt-example/archive/master.zip

Creating the applet

For this demonstration we'll create an applet that calls the Foxx service whenever someone Tweets about ArangoDB.

Start out by creating a new applet and selecting a Twitter trigger. We'll use the New tweet from search trigger and search for the hashtag #arangodb.

Next find and select the Webhooks action.

There's only one possible action using webhooks, so select Make a web request.

The next screen allows us to specify how the hook should be invoked.

In order for IFTTT to be able to invoke your webhook, the Foxx service must be accessible from the public internet.

We recommend using a tool like nginx to expose only the routes you want to be public. You can find an example of using nginx in the ArangoDB Foxx documentation.

We'll use basic authentication to make this slightly more secure than just leaving this service open to everyone. If you are using this service with the default configuration, this means the username is expected to be ifttt with the password secret.

In IFTTT these credentials can be passed directly in the URL field. Assuming the service is accessible at http://example.com/myfoxx/hook this means the full URL you would use is http://ifttt:[email protected]/myfoxx/hook.

The service expects a request using the POST method with an application/json content-type and the following body:

{
  "user": "<<<{{UserName}}>>>",
  "url": "<<<{{LinkToTweet}}>>>",
  "text": "<<<{{Text}}>>>"
}

Note that the {{double braces}} are replaced by the actual values of those ingredients. In order to be valid JSON these values also need to be escaped using <<<triple brackets>>>. At the time of this writing the IFTTT website indicates that double brackets would be sufficient but this seems to be untrue.

Finally review the applet in the next step and check the Activity tab to ensure the applet is running. You should eventually see entries indicating that the applet ran successfully when revisiting that tab later.

License

Copyright (c) 2019 ArangoDB Inc. All rights reserved.