Twitch webhook subscription gets created successfully but my server is not receiving updates

Nishant_Desai · May 10, 2019, 1:46pm

I am trying to subscribe to simple users/follows even like this

request({
  url: API_BASE_URL + '/webhooks/hub',
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Client-ID': this.config.clientId,
    'Content-Type': 'application/json'
  },
  form: {
    'hub.callback':
    'https://e250dce1.ngrok.io/twitch/webhook?item.id=<random_string_a>',
    'hub.mode': 'subscribe',
    'hub.topic': 'https://api.twitch.tv/helix/users/follows?first=1&to_id=<user_id>',
    'hub.lease_seconds': 864000,
    'hub.secret': <random_string_b>
   },
   json: true
}

I am getting 202 in response and when I try to get list of my subscriptions by making GET request to https://api.twitch.tv/helix/webhooks/subscriptions then I am seeing that new subscriptions have been added but when I follow user <user_id>, I don’t get any sort of notification from twitch.

I am also sending the challenge back in response to GET /twitch/webhook that my web server receives when it requests for a subscription, and I think this part is also working fine as I am getting proper list of subscriptions from twitch API.

And I have confirmed that my server is listening to /twitch/webhook for POST requests.

Any help is appreciated.

BarryCarlyon · May 10, 2019, 5:23pm

Is you NGROK tunnel still active?

Is the NGROK tunnel logging anything.

You might want to consider testing this against a larger streamer that may be live (for example Ninja), for a more reliable in stream of data.

Wheres the rest of your code?

You did echo the callback back to twitch here?

From what you are saying seems so, since the subscription appears in the webhook subscription list.

Nishant_Desai · May 10, 2019, 7:50pm

Yes I am using NGROK and yes it was tunneling, I can say that because I sent a dummy POST request on the https://<ngrok_url>/twitch/callback and I saw that request getting handled by my web server.

I will test it with some big twitch streamer and let you know.

My entire flow.
step 1. sending request to twitch to for subscribing.

await request({
    url: API_BASE_URL + '/webhooks/hub',
    method: 'POST',
    headers: {
        'Client-ID': this.config.clientId,
        'Content-Type': 'application/json'
    },
    form: {
        'hub.callback': https://<ngrok_url>/twitch/webhook?item.id=<random_string_a>',
        'hub.mode': 'subscribe',
        'hub.topic': 'https://api.twitch.tv/helix/users/follows?first=1&to_id=<twitch_channel_id>',
        'hub.lease_seconds': 864000,
        'hub.secret': <random_string_b>
    },
    json: true
});

step 2. Setting up webhooks in express so that it will accept requests coming from twitch.

router.get('/twitch/webhook', (req, res) => {
    // confirms subscription

	res.status(200).send(<challenge_string>);
});

router.post('/twitch/webhook', (req, res) => {
    // my business logic

	res.send(200);
});

step 3. I am getting getting GET /twitch/webhook, and once I send the <challenge_string> that I get from query string itself then I see a new entry when I fetch list of my active subscriptions from twitch.

step 4. Whenever I follow or unfollow the channel that has it’s id set to <twitch_channel_id> my web server should receive POST request from twitch with relevant data (which is not happening right now).

Nishant_Desai · May 11, 2019, 1:54am

You were right my setup is working if I listen to /users/follows event for ninja.

Any idea why it is not working for some other channel who’s not that popular (basically the demo account I’d created for testing) ?

BarryCarlyon · May 11, 2019, 9:37am

router.get('/twitch/webhook', (req, res) => {
    // confirms subscription

	res.send(<challenge_string>);
});

router.post('/twitch/webhook', (req, res) => {
    // my business logic

	res.send('OK');
});

Skip the 200’s and just OK and send the challenge string. Shouldn’t be an issue but express will handle the 200 for you.

You do not get unfollow notifications

You might be unfollow/refollowing too quick and the API didn’t clear your follow in order to re-notify for the refollow. Thats why we test follows on “real” data rather than trying to mock/force Webhooks to send with tests

Nishant_Desai · May 13, 2019, 9:57am

Skip the 200’s and just OK and send the challenge string. Shouldn’t be an issue but express will handle the 200 for you.

Yeah express should add 200 status in HTTP response but just to besure now I am doing res.sendStatus(200);.

You might be unfollow/refollowing too quick

I don’t think so as I am not doing anything for over 2-3 minutes after performing follow/unfollow action.

Anyways I want to use the /stream webhook the most, and it is working fine but I am receiving the updates very late,
I’m getting

stream_up notification after 2-3 minutes once I start my stream on twitch.
stream_down notification after 6-7 minutes once I stop my stream on twitch.

Is it okay for it to take this long ? or is it because I am testing this on my dummy channel which is not that popular ?

BarryCarlyon · May 13, 2019, 3:45pm

Yeah that’s not long enough

Due to the caching I’m about to mention

That’s correct, this is not “late”.

Stream up will take 2/3 minutes. (To confirm that the stream is in helix streams end point
Steam down on average takes 6 minutes. (To confirm the stream is no longed in helix and to confirm that the stream down was a stream down and not a OBS/XSplit crash)

The webhook. when sent is a “duplicate” of the data in the same URL of the topic you subscribed to. So the data on that URL matches whats in your payload. So it has to wait to confirm stream stability and for the Helix Cache to clear

Nishant_Desai · May 14, 2019, 8:43am

I can tolerate delay of 2-3 minutes but I cannot wait for 6-7 minutes, is there any way to get these webhook notifications faster ?

Maybe some sort of paid service provided by some 3rd party or Twitch itself ?

Dist · May 14, 2019, 9:50am

Twitch are working to reduce the delay, but there will always be some delay as by design it gives some time to allow for the stream to come back up just in case it was a brief outage rather than the streamer going offline by choice.

There is no paid service and no 3rd party could do better as any 3rd party source is just getting the data from Twitch themselves anyway.

If you need the fastest possible notifications that a stream has gone offline, you’d have to work with each individual broadcaster you need data for and run an app, or OBS/XSplit plugin on their end that will detect when they stop streaming and send you the data directly.

BarryCarlyon · May 14, 2019, 9:55am

No, if it was quicker, how do you intend to handle

a) OBS/XSplit crash and the broadcaster restarting the stream, which means you get two extra webhooks for no reason
b) How do you intend to handle how Twitch handles caching on the API?

It is as low as it’s gonna get. And it has got lower than it was when Twitch first bought out webhooks. Might see a minute of improvement.

But still gotta account for Software crash which is the primary reason for the delay.

How? There is no way to make this quicker.

Because it has to account for

a) Software crash
b) API caching.

if you paid for it

it would still be 6 minutes delay on a stream down

Even then you might still need to account for crashes which means you’ll suddenly stop getting heartbeat data (in the case of OBS).

Was it a stop? Was it a crash? Did the end stream event(s) correctly fire? Did the broadcaster hit stop in order to restart to change bit rate?

Which then means you need to debounce stream restarts, which webhooks, essentially, do for you.

Nishant_Desai · May 14, 2019, 8:15pm

Ok thanks for all the information , I really appreciate it.

system · June 13, 2019, 8:15pm

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