The Repository Hooks API manages the post-receive web and service hooks for a repository. There are two main APIs to manage these hooks: a JSON HTTP API, and PubSubHubbub.

Active hooks can be configured to trigger for one or more events. The default event is push. The available events are:

• push - Any git push to a Repository.
• issues - Any time an Issue is opened or closed.
• issue_comment - Any time an Issue is commented on.
• commit_comment - Any time a Commit is commented on.
• pull_request - Any time a Pull Request is opened, closed, or synchronized (updated due to a new push in the branch that the pull request is tracking).
• gollum - Any time a Wiki page is updated.
• watch - Any time a User watches the Repository.
• download - Any time a Download is added to the Repository.
• fork - Any time a Repository is forked.
• fork_apply - Any time a patch is applied to the Repository from the Fork Queue.
• member - Any time a User is added as a collaborator to a non-Organization Repository.
• public - Any time a Repository changes from private to public.
• status - Any time a Repository has a status update from the API

The payloads for all of the hooks mirror the payloads for the Event types, with the exception of the original push event.

For a Hook to go through, the Hook needs to be configured to trigger for an event, and the Service has to listen to it. The Services are all part of the open source github-services project. Most of the Services only listen for push events. However, the generic Web Service listens for all events. Other services like the IRC Service may only listen for push, issues, and pull_request events.

GET /repos/:user/:repo/hooks

<%= headers 200, :pagination => true %> <%= json(:hook) { |h| [h] } %>

GET /repos/:user/:repo/hooks/:id

<%= headers 200 %> <%= json :hook %>

POST /repos/:user/:repo/hooks

name : Required string - The name of the service that is being called. See /hooks for the possible names.

config : Required hash - A Hash containing key/value pairs to provide settings for this hook. These settings vary between the services and are defined in the github-services repo. Booleans are stored internally as "1" for true, and "0" for false. Any JSON true/false values will be converted automatically.

events : Optional array - Determines what events the hook is triggered for. Default: ["push"].

active : Optional boolean - Determines whether the hook is actually triggered on pushes.

<%= json
:name => "web", :active => true, :config => { :url => 'http://something.com/webhook'} %>

<%= headers 201, :Location => 'https://api.github.com/repos/user/repo/hooks/1' %> <%= json :hook %>

PATCH /repos/:user/:repo/hooks/:id

name : Required string - The name of the service that is being called. See /hooks for the possible names.

config : Required hash - A Hash containing key/value pairs to provide settings for this hook. Modifying this will replace the entire config object. These settings vary between the services and are defined in the github-services repo. Booleans are stored internally as "1" for true, and "0" for false. Any JSON true/false values will be converted automatically.

events : Optional array - Determines what events the hook is triggered for. This replaces the entire array of events. Default: ["push"].

add_events : Optional array - Determines a list of events to be added to the list of events that the Hook triggers for.

remove_events : Optional array - Determines a list of events to be removed from the list of events that the Hook triggers for.

active : Optional boolean - Determines whether the hook is actually triggered on pushes.

<%= json
:name => "campfire", :active => true, :config => { :subdomain => 'github', :room => 'Commits', :token => 'abc123'} %>

<%= headers 200 %> <%= json :hook %>

This will trigger the hook with the latest push to the current repository.

POST /repos/:user/:repo/hooks/:id/test

<%= headers 204 %>

DELETE /repos/:user/:repo/hooks/:id

<%= headers 204 %>

GitHub can also serve as a PubSubHubbub hub for all repositories. PSHB is a simple publish/subscribe protocol that lets servers register to receive updates when a topic is updated. The updates are sent with an HTTP POST request to a callback URL. Topic URLs for a GitHub repository's pushes are in this format:

https://github.com/:user/:repo/events/:event

The event can be any Event string that is listed at the top of this document.

The default format is what existing post-receive hooks should expect: A JSON body sent as the payload parameter in a POST. You can also specify to receive the raw JSON body with either an Accept header, or a .json extension.

Accept: application/json
https://github.com/:user/:repo/events/push.json

Callback URLs can use either the http:// protocol, or github://. github:// callbacks specify a GitHub service.

# Send updates to postbin.org
http://postbin.org/123

# Send updates to Campfire
github://campfire?subdomain=github&room=Commits&token=abc123

The GitHub PubSubHubbub endpoint is: https://api.github.com/hub. (GitHub Enterprise users should use http://yourhost/api/v3/hub as the PubSubHubbub endpoint, but not change the hub.topic URI format.) A successful request with curl looks like:

curl -u "user" -i \
  https://api.github.com/hub \
  -F "hub.mode=subscribe" \
  -F "hub.topic=https://github.com/:user/:repo/events/push" \
  -F "hub.callback=http://postbin.org/123"

PubSubHubbub requests can be sent multiple times. If the hook already exists, it will be modified according to the request.

hub.mode : Required string - Either subscribe or unsubscribe.

hub.topic : Required string - The URI of the GitHub repository to subscribe to. The path must be in the format of /:user/:repo/events/:event.

hub.callback : Required string - The URI to receive the updates to the topic.

hub.secret : Optional string - A shared secret key that generates a SHA1 HMAC of the payload content. You can verify a push came from GitHub by comparing the received body with the contents of the X-Hub-Signature header.