Facebook webhooks won't accept Ngrok and Localtunnel anymore

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

If you want to test webhooks locally you probably use Ngrok or Localtunnel. I do.

Recently I wanted to play with Instagram webhooks and I couldn’t because surprisingly Facebook do not accept Ngrok and Localtunnel URLs anymore and marks them as malicious and/or abusive.

I don’t really understand why Facebook blocked the only known solutions of local webhooks testing.

Fortunately I have a server and a domain name.

Solution

What we’ll need:

Nginx
LetsEncrypt cert (because Facebook wants HTTPS URL)

As soon as you configured your Nginx and it can accept traffic on port 443 add location section like this (pay attention to all the slashes. They are important):

location /proxy/ {
  proxy_pass http://localhost:3000/;
}

This will grab all the traffic to you-domain/proxy/, decrypt it and proxy it to port 3000.

Now, on you local machine, run:

ssh -R 3000:0.0.0.0:3000 -N user@server

Change ports as needed. The very first 3000 is remote port to redirect traffic from. The 0.0.0.0:3000 part is your local server listening on port 3000 as well.

You local server will get URLs without that /proxy part. So your-domain/proxy/webhooks will be transformed to 0.0.0.0:3000/webhooks

Now the traffic goes like this:

Origin(https) -> your-domain(https) -> your-server:3000(http) -> your-local-machine:3000(http)

Ebay API and Platform Notifications

Fri, 02 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

If your web site isn’t receiving the notifications from Ebay even though you have everything configured AND you’re using oAuth tokens for SetNotificationsPreferences request then you have nothing to do except contact the Ebay support.

Currently they have a special whitelist where they have to add your APP ID and the only way to add your app to that whitelist is to contact them. You can actually try to post a thread on their forum, but in this case you have to wait while someone form ebay staff will notice it.

Unfortunately the Support costs money and the price is $75/hour. Good news is they are not billing you for the request to whitelist your app so you can spend that hour for something else.

Ruslan's Tech Blog

Facebook webhooks won't accept Ngrok and Localtunnel anymore

Solution

Ebay API and Platform Notifications