Our larger corporate clients have asked us for a way to be able to exchange Zingtree data with other applications. Some customers want to send data from a Zingtree session to another application or include data from another application in Zingtree.
Zingtree’s data exchange feature makes use of Webhooks with JSON formatted data. In fact, a lot of the tools we utilize work the same way.
Here’s an Example
To demonstrate how to send and receive data from your decision trees, we will walk through how to build a simple tree that asks for a USA zip code, and then shows the city and state for that zip code inside the tree.
Try this demo tree in the Zingtree Gallery here.
We will send data to a custom webhook we built, which takes a parameter of a zip code. It returns a JSON structure with the city and state info. Here’s an example of the webhook in use:
http://zingtree.com/apps/webhook/filters/zippopotamus.php?zip=94960
If you click the link above, you’ll see these results:
{"zip":"94960","state":"California","state_abbreviation":"CA","city":"San Anselmo"}
The PHP source code for the webhook URL is here.
The variables #city#, #state# and #state_abbreviation# will now be usable by Zingtree. So to show the city, just enter #city# into the content area of any node.
Webhooks Process
Here’s a summary of how this works:
- Add the webhook to your organization’s apps.
- Include a call to the webhook in a node. When the node is visited, the call is executed.
- Any JSON variables returned by the call become Zingtree variables.
Adding the Webhook:
- Go to Account > My Apps.
- Click the Webhook button under My Apps.
- Enter a name for the webhook, and the URL as shown:
The URL is:
http://zingtree.com/apps/webhook/filters/zippopotamus.php?zip=#zip#
#zip# will receive the zip code variable entered by the end-user.
- Click Add Webhook. This makes the hook available to your trees.
Calling the Webhook when a node is visited:
- Go to Overview, and edit the node you want to trigger the webhook call.
- Under Send Message To, select Webhook: Zip Lookup.
Universal Parameters
Every call to the webhook URL you provide always includes the following parameters:
- node_id
- session_id
Adding Security/Authorization
You can add an extra layer of security to your webhooks by passing an authorization token into the URL that launches your tree. The token is passed back to the webhook URL in the HTTP header.
To send the authorization token MYTOKEN, add this to the URL that launches the tree:
&auth_token=MYTOKEN
To check the token in your webhook, look at the X-Auth-Token value in the HTTP header.
Please note: The auth_token remains the same for the entire tree session.
Credits
The demo uses the free zippopotam.us postal code lookup service.
Any questions? We’re here to help – please reach out at any time via the feedback page or the orange chat window at the bottom right of our homepage.
This article was originally published on April 28, 2016, and has been updated for accuracy.
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