Ingest data from RudderStack webhook

Ingest RudderStack events directly into your RisingWave database for real-time processing and analytics.

RudderStack is a Customer Data Platform (CDP) that enables you to collect, route, and process event data from your websites, mobile apps, and servers to various downstream destinations. Webhooks in RudderStack allow you to send real-time event data to external systems via HTTP requests. By configuring RisingWave as a webhook destination, you can ingest and process RudderStack events directly within your database for real-time analytics and processing.

This guide will walk through the steps to set up RisingWave as a destination for RudderStack webhooks.

1. Create a secret in RisingWave

First, create a secret in RisingWave to securely store a secret string. This secret will be used to validate incoming webhook requests from RudderStack.

CREATE SECRET test_secret WITH (backend = 'meta') AS 'TEST_WEBHOOK';

Parameter or clause	Description
test_secret	The name of the secret.
TEST_WEBHOOK	The secret string used for signing and verifying webhook payloads. Replace this with a secure, random string.

2. Create a table in RisingWave

Next, create a table configured to accept webhook data from RudderStack.

create table wbhtable (
  data JSONB
) WITH (
  connector = 'webhook',
) VALIDATE SECRET test_secret AS secure_compare(
  headers->>'authorization',
  test_secret
);

Parameter or clause	Description
data JSONB	Defines the name of column to store the JSON payload from the webhook. Currently, only JSONB type is supported for webhook tables.
headers->>'...'	Extracts the signature provided by RudderStack in the authorization HTTP header. The header key can be any string value and you can specify it when you create your webhook destination for RisingWave. In secure_compare() function, the whole HTTP header is interpreted as a JSONB object, and you can access the header value using the ->> operator, but only the lower-case header names in the ->> operator, otherwise the verification will fail.
test_secret	Provides the expected signature. In the example above, we directly compare the secret value of test_secret with the signature provided in the headers to verify the requests.
secure_compare(...)	Validates requests by matching the header signature against the computed signature, ensuring only authenticated requests are processed. The secure_compare() function compares two strings in a fixed amount of time, regardless of whether they are equal or not, ensuring that the comparison is secure and resistant to timing attacks.

3. Set up webhook in RudderStack

After configuring RisingWave to accept webhook data, set up RudderStack to send events to your RisingWave instance.

RisingWave webhook URL

The webhook URL should follow this format:

https://<HOST>/webhook/<database>/<schema_name>/<table_name>

Parameter	Description
HOST	The hostname or IP address where your RisingWave instance is accessible. This could be a domain name or an IP address.
database	The name of the RisingWave database where your table resides
schema_name	The schema name of your table, typically public unless specified otherwise.
table_name	The name of the table you created to receive webhook data, e.g., wbhtable.

Configure webhook in RudderStack

For more detailed instructions, refer to the RudderStack documentation.

1. Access RudderStack Dashboard: Log in to your RudderStack dashboard.

2. As a CDP, RudderStack allow your build your own data pipeline. To sink data into RisingWave, you first need to have data sources. You can build your sources following the guidance. After creating your source, in the left sidebar, click on Collect > Destinations > New Destination.

3. Choose Webhook as the Destination:

   • Search for webhook in the list of available destinations.
   • Select webhook and proceed to configure it.
4. Configure the webhook settings:

   • Name destination: Specify the name of your webhook destination.
   • Connect Sources: Choose the data source you want to push to RisingWave from.
   • Webhook URL: Enter your RisingWave webhook URL.
   • URL Method: Select POST.
   • Headers: Keep the content-type: application/json unchanged. Add an Authorization header with the value set to your secret string (‘TEST_WEBHOOK’ or the secure string you used when creating test_secret in RisingWave).
     • Header Key: Authorization (Or replace with the value you like, make sure it’s aligned with the CREATE TABLE DML SQL).
     • Header Value: TEST_WEBHOOK (replace with your actual secret).
5. Save and Activate the Destination:

   • Review your settings.
   • Click continue to activate the webhook destination.

4. Push Data from RudderStack via Webhook

With the webhook configured, RudderStack will automatically send HTTP POST requests to your RisingWave webhook URL whenever there are data generated from the connected source. RisingWave will receive these requests, validate the signatures, and insert the payload data into the target table.

5. Further event processing

The data in the table is already ready for further processing. You can access the fields using data->'field_name' in SQL queries.

You can create a materialized view to extract specific fields from the JSON payload.

CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW rudderstack_events AS
SELECT
  data->>'id' AS id,
  data->'sender'->>'login' AS sender_login,
  data->>'created_at' AS event_time
FROM wbhtable;

You can now query rudderstack_events like a regular table to perform analytics, generate reports, or trigger further processing.