I Built a Signed Webhook Receiver for Cross-Server Communication
Sometimes your application can reach an external service from one server, but not from another. I ran into this problem while working on one of my projects. I needed my server in Iran to communicate with Telegram, but the connection wasn't reliable from inside Iran. Instead of moving the whole application, I built a small intermediate service: Signed Webhook Receiver It is a lightweight FastAPI…
Developers often encounter challenges when attempting to communicate with external services from servers located in different regions. During a recent project, the author faced this issue while trying to establish a connection between their server in Iran and Telegram. Recognizing the unreliability of the connection, the author devised a solution by creating a modest intermediate service: Signed Webhook Receiver.
This lightweight FastAPI service is designed to receive requests that are signed with an RSA private key. Prior to processing these requests, the service verifies their authenticity using the corresponding public key. By implementing this system, your primary server can securely communicate with external services, even if direct connections prove unreliable.
The Signed Webhook Receiver can be particularly beneficial in several scenarios. Firstly, it enables secure server-to-server communication, ensuring that data exchanged between servers remains protected. Secondly, it can act as a webhook and internal API intermediary, facilitating smooth data transfer between different components of your application. Additionally, it can serve as a controlled proxy or gateway, allowing servers from various network environments to communicate effectively.
One noteworthy use case involves connecting servers across different network environments. For instance, if your main application is hosted outside Iran but a payment gateway only accepts requests from Iranian IP addresses, you can deploy an Iranian server to act as an intermediate gateway. This setup ensures that the payment gateway receives authenticated requests while maintaining control over which operations and destinations are permitted.
The project was developed using Python, FastAPI, Cryptography, Docker, and Traefik, and it is open source. You can view the repository on GitHub. The author also provides technical notes and development articles on their website, where they delve deeper into the process of building a secure webhook receiver for server-to-server communication.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.