Stop polling APIs to death — learn when to pull with REST and when to be pushed with webhooks.
Web DevelopmentPDF · 4 pages· v1.0
4.4Most integration bugs come from using the wrong communication pattern. Polling a REST endpoint every few seconds to find out if something changed is wasteful and slow; exposing a webhook receiver without verifying signatures is a security hole. This guide makes the choice clear. It explains the two models in plain terms — REST is pull (you ask when you want data), webhooks are push (the other system tells you the moment something happens) — and gives you a decision framework for picking between them based on latency needs, who owns the systems, and how often data changes. The second half is the part people actually need: how to build a webhook receiver correctly. That means verifying the signature, returning 200 fast, processing asynchronously, handling retries and duplicate deliveries with idempotency, and dealing with events that arrive out of order. After reading you will be able to look at any integration and confidently say 'this should be a webhook' or 'polling is fine here', and you will be able to build a receiver that does not lose events, double-process them, or get spoofed. Who it is for: backend and full-stack developers wiring up payment providers, CI systems, messaging platforms, or any third-party service, who want to do it correctly the first time.
No. The patterns (signature verification, idempotency, fast acknowledgement, retries) are universal. Examples are written generically so they apply to payments, CI, chat, and any webhook source.
Yes, the receiver must be reachable by the sender. The guide covers local development with tunneling and how to secure the endpoint with signature verification.
When you control the cadence, data changes infrequently, or you cannot host a public endpoint. The guide gives concrete criteria and shows how to poll efficiently with conditional requests.
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