Venmo Webhook to Monitor Payment Data

Question

I am working on a charity project at school in which the top 10 donors will be rewarded. The ultimate goal is to have a live feed of the top 10 lists like a scoreboard, either on our websites or though periodic tweets. I am a second year computer science major and know python.

I dont think I will have an issues parsing the JSON into a python dictionary or list and then sorting the leaderboard. The problem is I don't know enough about web technologies in terms of importing the data using a webhook. I can see the data using https://requestb.in/ and testing transactions, but I need a more permanent solution. I also need to be able to run this all online and not on my computer.

I would really appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

Example Transaction data seen on https://requestb.in/

{
  "date_created": "2013-12-16T16:15:23.514136",
  "type": "payment.created",
  "data": {
    "action": "pay",
    "actor": {
      "about": "No Short Bio",
      "date_joined": "2011-09-09T00:30:51",
      "display_name": "Andrew Kortina",
      "first_name": "Andrew",
      "id": "711020519620608087",
      "last_name": "Kortina",
      "profile_picture_url": "",
      "username": "kortina"
    },
    "amount": null,
    "audience": "public",
    "date_completed": "2013-12-16T16:20:00",
    "date_created": "2013-12-16T16:20:00",
    "id": "1312337325098795713",
    "note": "jejkeljeljke",
    "status": "settled",
    "target": {
      "email": null,
      "phone": null,
      "type": "user",
      "user": {
        "about": "No Short Bio",
        "date_joined": "2011-09-09T00:30:54",
        "display_name": "Shreyans Bhansali",
        "first_name": "Shreyans",
        "id": "711020544786432772",
        "last_name": "Bhansali",
        "profile_picture_url": "",
        "username": "shreyans"
      }
    }
  }
}

Answer 1

I see that your example JSON above is from https://developer.venmo.com/docs/webhooks

A webhook is basically just a URL that knows how to handle POST requests; when they want to notify your site/webapp, they call that URL and pass it the information they want you to receive.

The URL can be unencrypted (http) or encrypted (https); if you are dealing with financial info you definitely want it to be encrypted. Check your web host's instructions on setting up an SSL certificate.

On the same page it talks about how to set configure your webhook (log in to your Venmo account, go to the Developer tab, and enter your URL). For confirmation, it will make a GET call (ie https://your_site/path/page?venmo_challenge=XYZZY); your page needs to return the challenge value (ie XYZZY).

I will suggest Flask as a simple Python framework and Heroku for hosting; there are many other alternatives, but this should get you started.