This guide explains how to use webhooks to receive asynchronous notifications for the status of your audience export requests. This feature is available only in the v1alpha version of the Data API.
Webhook notifications are an advanced feature of the Google Analytics Data API. For an introduction to the audience export feature, see create an audience export.
Without webhooks, you'll need to periodically poll the API to determine when a request is complete.
Create a sample webhook application using Cloud Run
You can create a sample webhook application using Google Cloud by following the tutorial Quickstart: Deploy a sample service to Cloud Run.
In order for the sample service to listen to POST webhook notification requests, replace the index.js file from the quickstart tutorial with the following code:
import express from 'express';
const app = express();
app.use(express.json());
app.post('/', (req, res) => {
const channelToken = req.get('X-Goog-Channel-Token');
const bodyJson = JSON.stringify(req.body);
console.log(`channel token: ${channelToken}`);
console.log(`notification body: ${bodyJson}`);
res.sendStatus(200);
});
const port = parseInt(process.env.PORT) || 8080;
app.listen(port, () => {
console.log(`helloworld: listening on port ${port}`);
});
For every incoming webhook notification sent as a POST request, this code prints out the webhook notification JSON body and a channel token value, and returns the HTTP code 200 to indicate successful operation.
Once you've reached the end of the Cloud Run quickstart tutorial and deployed the webhook application using the gcloud run deploy command, save the URL where your service is deployed.
The service URL is displayed in the console, for example:
Service URL: https://webhooks-test-abcdef-uc.a.run.app
This is the server notification URI where your application listens to webhook notifications from Google Analytics.
Create an audience list and turn on webhook notifications
To request webhook notifications, specify the following values in the webhookNotification object:
The server notification URI containing the web address that will receive webhook notifications.
(Optional) An arbitrary string
channelTokento guard against the message being spoofed. Specify thechannelTokenin theX-Goog-Channel-TokenHTTP header of the webhook POST request.
Here's a sample request using webhooks:
HTTP Request
POST https://analyticsdata.googleapis.com/v1alpha/properties/1234567/audienceLists
{
"webhookNotification": {
"uri": "https://webhooks-test-abcdef-uc.a.run.app",
"channelToken": "123456"
},
"audience": "properties/1234567/audiences/12345",
"dimensions": [
{
"dimensionName": "deviceId"
}
]
}
The response from the audienceLists.create method contains the webhookNotification, which confirms that the specified webhook successfully responded in under 5 seconds.
Here's a sample response:
HTTP Response
{
"response": {
"@type": "type.googleapis.com/google.analytics.data.v1alpha.AudienceList",
"name": "properties/1234567/audienceLists/123",
"audience": "properties/1234567/audiences/12345",
"audienceDisplayName": "Purchasers",
"dimensions": [
{
"dimensionName": "deviceId"
}
],
"state": "ACTIVE",
"beginCreatingTime": "2024-06-10T04:50:09.119726379Z",
"creationQuotaTokensCharged": 51,
"rowCount": 13956,
"percentageCompleted": 100,
"webhookNotification": {
"uri": "https://webhooks-test-abcdef-uc.a.run.app",
"channelToken": "123456"
}
}
}
If a webhook fails to respond, or if you provide an incorrect service URL, an error message is returned instead.
Here's an example error you might receive:
{
"error": {
"code": 400,
"message": "Expected response code of 200 from webhook URI but instead
'404' was received.",
"status": "INVALID_ARGUMENT"
}
}
Process webhook notifications
The POST request to a webhook service contains both a JSON version of the long running operation resource in the body, and a sentTimestamp field. The sent timestamp specifies the Unix epoch time in microseconds that the request was sent. You can use this timestamp to identify replayed notifications.
Either one or two POST requests are sent to the webhook during an audience list creation:
- The first POST request is sent immediately, showing the newly created audience list in its
CREATINGstate. If the first request to the webhook fails, theaudienceLists.createoperation returns an error and the webhook failure details. - The second POST request is sent after the audience list completes creation. Creation is complete when the audience list reaches either the
ACTIVEorFAILEDstate.
Here's an example of the first notification for an audience list, in the CREATING state:
{
"sentTimestamp":"1718261355692983",
"name": "properties/1234567/audienceLists/123",
"audience": "properties/1234567/audiences/12345",
"audienceDisplayName":"Purchasers",
"dimensions":[{"dimensionName":"deviceId"}],
"state":"CREATING",
"beginCreatingTime": "2024-06-10T04:50:09.119726379Z",
"creationQuotaTokensCharged":0,
"rowCount":0,
"percentageCompleted":0,
"webhookNotification":
{
"uri": "https://webhooks-test-abcdef-uc.a.run.app",
"channelToken":"123456"
}
}
Here's an example of the second notification for an audience list, in the ACTIVE state:
{
"sentTimestamp":"1718261355692983",
"name": "properties/1234567/audienceLists/123",
"audience": "properties/1234567/audiences/12345",
"audienceDisplayName":"Purchasers",
"dimensions":[{"dimensionName":"deviceId"}],
"state":"ACTIVE",
"beginCreatingTime": "2024-06-10T04:50:09.119726379Z",
"creationQuotaTokensCharged":68,
"rowCount":13956,
"percentageCompleted":100,
"webhookNotification":
{
"uri": "https://webhooks-test-abcdef-uc.a.run.app",
"channelToken":"123456"
}
}
The second notification confirms that the audience list has been created and is ready to be queried using the audienceLists.query method.
To test webhooks after calling the audienceLists.create method, you can inspect the logs of your sample Cloud Run webhook application, and see the JSON body of every notification sent by Google Analytics.