Last updated Aug 24, 2022

Webhooks

Webhooks provide a way for application developers to receive notifications when a model changes. Although webhooks are only accessible through the API currently, we hope that developers working on third party apps for Trello find them as useful as we do.

Creating a Webhook

We designed webhooks with security in mind. Webhooks belong to tokens and can only monitor objects that the token can access. The first step, then, to creating a webhook is obtaining a token either by our web client authorization process or by authorizing via OAuth.

The second requirement for a webhook is a callbackURL parameter. When a model with a webhook changes, the update is fired via an HTTP POST request from Trello to the URL provided. The body of the post will be a JSON payload of the action (the action that changed the model), and the updated model. It may be helpful for you to add your own parameters to the callbackURL if you’ll be using multiple webhooks, such as

https://mycallback.com/trelloCallbacks/?memberID=14&mainModel=true

The provided callbackURL must be a valid URL during the creation of the webhook. We run a quick HTTP HEAD request on the URL, and if a 200 status code is not returned in the response, then the webhook will not be created. Additionally, if your callbackURL contains an invalid SSL certificate the webhook will not be created (no SSL certificate will not cause the creation to fail).

And lastly, you’ll need the id of a model to watch. This can be the id of a member, card, board, or anything that actions apply to. Any event involving this model will trigger the webhook.

Example setup from a web client:

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$.post("https://api.trello.com/1/tokens/{APIToken}/webhooks/?key={APIKey}", {
  description: "My first webhook",
  callbackURL: "http://www.mywebsite.com/trelloCallback",
  idModel: "4d5ea62fd76aa1136000000c",
});

or via curl:

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curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
https://api.trello.com/1/tokens/{APIToken}/webhooks/ \
-d '{
  "key": "{APIKey}",
  "callbackURL": "http://www.mywebsite.com/trelloCallback",
  "idModel":"4d5ea62fd76aa1136000000c",
  "description": "My first webhook"
}'

Get your APPLICATION_KEY on Trello.

Triggering Webhooks

Now that the webhook is set up, whenever a change on the model occurs, we will send an HTTP POST request to the provided endpoint.

Example Webhook Response

All webhooks contain these 3 fields:

  • action: an Action object which describes the what action triggered the webhook response.
  • model: a model that the webhook is subscribed to (e.g. a board, a card).
  • webhook: the webhook model itself.
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{
  "action": {
    "id": "51f9424bcd6e040f3c002412",
    "idMemberCreator": "4fc78a59a885233f4b349bd9",
    "data": {
      "board": {
        "name": "Trello Development",
        "id": "4d5ea62fd76aa1136000000c"
      },
      "card": {
        "idShort": 1458,
        "name": "Webhooks",
        "id": "51a79e72dbb7e23c7c003778"
      },
      "voted": true
    },
    "type": "voteOnCard",
    "date": "2013-07-31T16:58:51.949Z",
    "memberCreator": {
      "id": "4fc78a59a885233f4b349bd9",
      "avatarHash": "2da34d23b5f1ac1a20e2a01157bfa9fe",
      "fullName": "Doug Patti",
      "initials": "DP",
      "username": "doug"
    }
  },
  "model": {
    "id": "4d5ea62fd76aa1136000000c",
    "name": "Trello Development",
    "desc": "Trello board used by the Trello team to track work on Trello.  How meta!\n\nThe development of the Trello API is being tracked at https://trello.com/api\n\nThe development of Trello Mobile applications is being tracked at https://trello.com/mobile",
    "closed": false,
    "idOrganization": "4e1452614e4b8698470000e0",
    "pinned": true,
    "url": "https://trello.com/b/nC8QJJoZ/trello-development",
    "prefs": {
      "permissionLevel": "public",
      "voting": "public",
      "comments": "public",
      "invitations": "members",
      "selfJoin": false,
      "cardCovers": true,
      "canBePublic": false,
      "canBeOrg": false,
      "canBePrivate": false,
      "canInvite": true
    },
    "labelNames": {
      "yellow": "Infrastructure",
      "red": "Bug",
      "purple": "Repro'd",
      "orange": "Feature",
      "green": "Mobile",
      "blue": "Verified"
    }
  },
  "webhook": {
    "id": "5f5ea62fd76aa1136003300c",
    "description": "My Webhook",
    "idModel": "4d5ea62fd76aa1136000000c",
    "callbackURL": "https://mysite.com/callback",
    "active": true,
    "consecutiveFailures": 0,
    "firstConsecutiveFailDate": "null"
  }
}

Retries

If for some reason the connection is disrupted, or unavailable, the webhook will retry 3 times before stopping.

Trello will backoff in time with each retry. We'll wait 30 seconds after the first failure, then 60 seconds, and, finally, 120 seconds before trying the final time.

Webhook Signatures

Trello also signs webhook requests so you can optionally verify that they originated from Trello. Each webhook trigger contains the HTTP header X-Trello-Webhook. The header is a base64 digest of an HMAC-SHA1 hash. The hashed content should be the binary representation of the concatenation of the full request body and the callbackURL exactly as it was provided during webhook creation. The key used to sign this text is your application’s secret. Your application secret can be found at the API Key tab on your Power-Up management page https://trello.com/power-ups/admin and is also used as the OAuth1.0 secret.

Here is some sample code for checking the validity of a request using Node.js:

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var crypto = require("crypto");

function verifyTrelloWebhookRequest(request, secret, callbackURL) {
  var base64Digest = function (s) {
    return crypto.createHmac("sha1", secret).update(s).digest("base64");
  };
  var content = JSON.stringify(request.body) + callbackURL;
  var doubleHash = base64Digest(content);
  var headerHash = request.headers["x-trello-webhook"];
  return doubleHash == headerHash;
}

To see an example of checking signatures in Python, check out the code snippet provided here.

Deleting Webhooks

There are three ways to delete webhooks.

  1. Using the DELETE route on webhooks
  2. If the webhook request from Trello, when POSTing to the callbackURL, receives an HTTP 410 Gone response, the webhook will be deleted.
  3. If the token that the webhook is bound to is revoked or expires, then the webhook will be deleted

Webhook Actions and Types

There are a lot of different types of actions that can be sent to a webhook in Trello. Check out the Action Types section for a full list of the types of Actions that exist in Trello.

Use the table below to help you keep track of which actions will fire for webhooks on which Trello objects.

Click to expand table
ActionCardListBoardMemberTeamEnterprise
acceptEnterpriseJoinRequestxx
addAttachmentToCardxxxx
addChecklistToCardxxx
addLabelToCardxxx
addMemberToBoardxx
addMemberToCardxxx
addMemberToOrganizationxx
addOrganizationToEnterprisexx
addToEnterprisePluginWhitelistxx
addToOrganizationBoardxxx
commentCardxxxx
convertToCardFromCheckItemxx
copyBoardx
copyCardxxx
copyChecklistxxx
copyCommentCardx
createBoardx
createBoardInvitationxx
createBoardPreferencex
createCardxxx
createCheckItem***xxx
createLabelxx
createListxx
createOrganizationx
createOrganizationInvitationxx
deactivatedMemberInBoardx
deactivatedMemberInEnterprisexx
deactivatedMemberInOrganizationxx
deleteAttachmentFromCardxxx
deleteBoardInvitationxx
deleteCardxxxx
deleteCheckItemxxx
deleteComment***xxx
deleteLabelxx
deleteOrganizationInvitationxx
disableEnterprisePluginWhitelistxx
disablePluginxx
disablePowerUpxx
emailCardxxx
enableEnterprisePluginWhitelistxx
enablePluginxx
enablePowerUpxx
makeAdminOfBoardxx
makeAdminOfOrganizationxx
makeNormalMemberOfBoardxx
makeNormalMemberOfOrganizationxx
makeObserverOfBoardxx
memberJoinedTrellox
moveCardFromBoardxxxx
moveCardToBoardxxxx
moveListFromBoardxxx
moveListToBoardxxx
reactivatedMemberInBoardxx
reactivatedMemberInEnterprisex
reactivatedMemberInOrganizationx
removeChecklistFromCardxxx
removeFromEnterprisePluginWhitelistxx
removeFromOrganizationBoardxxx
removeLabelFromCardxxx
removeMemberFromBoardxx
removeMemberFromCardxxx
removeMemberFromOrganizationxx
removeOrganizationFromEnterprisexx
unconfirmedBoardInvitationxx
unconfirmedOrganizationInvitationxx
updateBoardxx
updateCardxxxx
updateCheckItemxxx
updateCheckItemStateOnCardxxx
updateChecklistxx
updateCommentxxx
updateLabelxx
updateListxxx
updateMember (deprecated)
updateOrganizationxx
voteOnCardxxx

Automatic Webhook Disablement

Trello will disable webhooks that experience consecutive failures for 30 days without a successful sending of a webhook event to the callback URL. There are currently two types of failures:

  • Callback endpoint failure to respond. For example, the webhook's callback endpoint begins responding with 400's, 500's, or with nothing at all.
  • The webhook's token has lost access to the model the webhook is watching. For instance, if the token's owner left the board that the webhook is watching, the token will lose access to the board. Therefore any board events that trigger a webhook event to be sent will fail.

Keep in mind that both the temporal boundary as well as the consecutive failure count thresholds must be met before the webhook is disabled. That means a single webhook must fail for 30 days and over 1000 times. A single successful response will reset all counts and return the webhook to a good state.

Please note that the limits may change without notice.

Webhooks and Admins

One of the best ways to keep track of what is happening inside of an organization is to create webhooks using the token of an admin of the organization. Webhooks on boards created by an admin's token will receive actions regardless of whether the admin is a member of the board or not. Members of organizations are able to create "Private" boards which are only visible to members of the board and admins of the organization.

You should create a webhook on the organization in the event that the admin whose token you are using is made a normal member of the Workspace or removed from the organization, you are notified via one of these two actions: makeNormalMemberOfOrganization and removeMemberFromOrganization. These will be the final admin-privileged actions that you receive of the organization webhook for that admin. Webhooks created on admin-privileged objects (for example, private boards on which the admin is not a member) will not be deleted; however, they will not continue to receive updates. This does mean that if an admin is on a Workspace and you have created webhooks on admin-privileged objects, the user is then made a normal member, and then again re-instated as an admin - your webhooks will continue to receive actions as they were.

When a user is deactivated from an organization, a webhook on the organization will not receive an action regarding the deactivation.

X-Trello-Client-Identifier header and Webhooks

Trello accepts a X-Trello-Client-Identifier request header on API requests made to Trello. The value of this header is returned to webhooks owned by the application key that made the API request. This header can be used by integrations that trigger actions based on webhooks, like syncing or automation tools, to ensure that they are not running a loop.

The header value is trimmed and truncated to a maximum length of 1000 characters. Trello does not store this value, but it may end up in request logs, so do not use it to pass secrets of any kind.

Webhook Sources

All webhook request will come from one of the following IP addresses/subnets:

  • 104.192.142.240/28 (104.192.142.240 - 104.192.142.255)

Additionally, Trello limits SSL to port 443.

If you recieve a webhook request from an unexpected source, you can also check it's authenticity by referencing https://ip-ranges.atlassian.com/. An ip address that falls within an ip range that has trello listed under its product field is a valid ip address.

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