← Stream / stream / manage-video-library

Use webhooks

Webhooks notify your service when videos successfully finish processing and are ready to stream or if your video enters an error state.

To subscribe to receive webhook notifications on your service or modify an existing subscription, generate an API token on the Account API tokens page of the Cloudflare dashboard.

Go to Account API tokens ↗

The webhook notification URL must include the protocol. Only http:// or https:// is supported.

curl -X PUT --header 'Authorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>' \
https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/<ACCOUNT_ID>/stream/webhook \
--data '{"notificationUrl":"<WEBHOOK_NOTIFICATION_URL>"}'

Example response

{
	"result": {
		"notificationUrl": "http://www.your-service-webhook-handler.com",
		"modified": "2019-01-01T01:02:21.076571Z",
		"secret": "85011ed3a913c6ad5f9cf6c5573cc0a7"
	},
	"success": true,
	"errors": [],
	"messages": []
}

Notifications

When a video on your account finishes processing, you will receive a POST request notification with information about the video.

Example POST request body sent in response to successful encoding

{
	"uid": "6b9e68b07dfee8cc2d116e4c51d6a957",
	"creator": null,
	"thumbnail": "https://customer-f33zs165nr7gyfy4.cloudflarestream.com/6b9e68b07dfee8cc2d116e4c51d6a957/thumbnails/thumbnail.jpg",
	"thumbnailTimestampPct": 0,
	"readyToStream": true,
	"status": {
		"state": "ready",
		"pctComplete": "39.000000",
		"errorReasonCode": "",
		"errorReasonText": ""
	},
	"meta": {
		"filename": "small.mp4",
		"filetype": "video/mp4",
		"name": "small.mp4",
		"relativePath": "null",
		"type": "video/mp4"
	},
	"created": "2022-06-30T17:53:12.512033Z",
	"modified": "2022-06-30T17:53:21.774299Z",
	"size": 383631,
	"preview": "https://customer-f33zs165nr7gyfy4.cloudflarestream.com/6b9e68b07dfee8cc2d116e4c51d6a957/watch",
	"allowedOrigins": [],
	"requireSignedURLs": false,
	"uploaded": "2022-06-30T17:53:12.511981Z",
	"uploadExpiry": "2022-07-01T17:53:12.511973Z",
	"maxSizeBytes": null,
	"maxDurationSeconds": null,
	"duration": 5.5,
	"input": {
		"width": 560,
		"height": 320
	},
	"playback": {
		"hls": "https://customer-f33zs165nr7gyfy4.cloudflarestream.com/6b9e68b07dfee8cc2d116e4c51d6a957/manifest/video.m3u8",
		"dash": "https://customer-f33zs165nr7gyfy4.cloudflarestream.com/6b9e68b07dfee8cc2d116e4c51d6a957/manifest/video.mpd"
	},
	"watermark": null
}

uid – The video's unique identifier.
readytoStream – Returns true when at least one quality level is encoded and ready to be streamed.
status – The processing status.
- state – Returns ready when a video is done processing and all quality levels are encoded.
- pctComplete – The percentage of processing that is complete. When this reaches 100, all quality levels are available.
  
  Tip
  Tip
  If you want to ensure the highest picture quality, enable video playback only when state is ready and pctComplete is 100.
meta – Metadata associated with the uploaded file.
created – Timestamp indicating when the video record was created.

Error codes

If a video could not process successfully, the state field returns error, and the errReasonCode returns one of the values listed below.

ERR_NON_VIDEO – The upload is not a video.
ERR_DURATION_EXCEED_CONSTRAINT – The video duration exceeds the constraints defined in the direct creator upload.
ERR_FETCH_ORIGIN_ERROR – The video failed to download from the URL.
ERR_MALFORMED_VIDEO – The video is a valid file but contains corrupt data that cannot be recovered.
ERR_DURATION_TOO_SHORT – The video's duration is shorter than 0.1 seconds.
ERR_UNKNOWN – If Stream cannot automatically determine why the video returned an error, the ERR_UNKNOWN code will be used.

In addition to the state field, a video's readyToStream field must also be true for a video to play.

Example error response

{
  "readyToStream": false,
  "status": {
    "state": "error",
    "step": "encoding",
    "pctComplete": "39",
    "errReasonCode": "ERR_MALFORMED_VIDEO",
    "errReasonText": "The video was deemed to be corrupted or malformed.",
  }
}

Verify webhook authenticity

Cloudflare Stream will sign the webhook requests sent to your notification URLs and include the signature of each request in the Webhook-Signature HTTP header. This allows your application to verify the webhook requests are sent by Stream.

To verify a signature, you need to retrieve your webhook signing secret. This value is returned in the API response when you create or retrieve the webhook.

To verify the signature, get the value of the Webhook-Signature header, which will look similar to the example below.

Webhook-Signature: time=1230811200,sig1=60493ec9388b44585a29543bcf0de62e377d4da393246a8b1c901d0e3e672404

1. Parse the signature

Retrieve the Webhook-Signature header from the webhook request and split the string using the , character.

Split each value again using the = character.

The value for time is the current UNIX time ↗ when the server sent the request. sig1 is the signature of the request body.

At this point, you should discard requests with timestamps that are too old for your application.

2. Create the signature source string

Prepare the signature source string and concatenate the following strings:

Value of the time field for example 1230811200
Character .
Webhook request body (complete with newline characters, if applicable)

Every byte in the request body must remain unaltered for successful signature verification.

3. Create the expected signature

Compute an HMAC with the SHA256 function (HMAC-SHA256) using your webhook secret and the source string from step 2. This step depends on the programming language used by your application.

Cloudflare's signature will be encoded to hex.

4. Compare expected and actual signatures

Compare the signature in the request header to the expected signature. Preferably, use a constant-time comparison function to compare the signatures.

If the signatures match, you can trust that Cloudflare sent the webhook.

Limitations

Webhooks will only be sent after video processing is complete, and the body will indicate whether the video processing succeeded or failed.
Only one webhook subscription is allowed per-account.
Cloudflare cannot send webhooks to localhost or local IP addresses. A publicly accessible URL is required. For local testing, use a Quick Tunnel to expose your local server to the Internet. For a step-by-step walkthrough, refer to Test webhooks locally.

Examples

Golang

Using crypto/hmac ↗:

package main

import (
 "crypto/hmac"
 "crypto/sha256"
 "encoding/hex"
 "log"
)

func main() {
 secret := []byte("secret from the Cloudflare API")
 message := []byte("string from step 2")

 hash := hmac.New(sha256.New, secret)
 hash.Write(message)

 hashToCheck := hex.EncodeToString(hash.Sum(nil))

 log.Println(hashToCheck)
}

Node.js

var crypto = require("crypto");

var key = "secret from the Cloudflare API";
var message = "string from step 2";

var hash = crypto.createHmac("sha256", key).update(message);

hash.digest("hex");

Ruby

    require 'openssl'

    key = 'secret from the Cloudflare API'
    message = 'string from step 2'

    OpenSSL::HMAC.hexdigest('sha256', key, message)

In JavaScript (for example, to use in Cloudflare Workers)

const key = "secret from the Cloudflare API";
const message = "string from step 2";

const getUtf8Bytes = (str) =>
	new Uint8Array(
		[...decodeURIComponent(encodeURIComponent(str))].map((c) =>
			c.charCodeAt(0),
		),
	);

const keyBytes = getUtf8Bytes(key);
const messageBytes = getUtf8Bytes(message);

const cryptoKey = await crypto.subtle.importKey(
	"raw",
	keyBytes,
	{ name: "HMAC", hash: "SHA-256" },
	true,
	["sign"],
);
const sig = await crypto.subtle.sign("HMAC", cryptoKey, messageBytes);

[...new Uint8Array(sig)].map((b) => b.toString(16).padStart(2, "0")).join("");