Mattermost incoming webhooks error, "Unable to parse incoming data"

Question

Judging by the amount of information out there this does not seem like a common way to execute mattermost webhooks. We have a mattermost installation, we have an older web application used to lookup inventory, we would like to be able to via webhook send a message to a team containing some information relating to a part search request.

I almost thought I could get away with making an ajax post request to the webhook URL with the "payload" set as a param, but this returns 400 "Unable To Parse Incoming Data", I thought for whatever reason the ajax request was the issue so I created a PHP script to do the curl request, this is what I have;

<?php

$payload = json_encode($_REQUEST['payload']);

$ch = curl_init('http://dev2:8065/hooks/6isjcohwyibsf8kp5g9p6bcgoa');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "POST");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "$payload");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

$result = curl_exec($ch);

echo $result;

Any suggestion at this point would be worthwhile. This either can't be done for whatever reason or it's so trivial I'm over thinking it.

payload sample,

The payload being sent:

'payload={"text": "| Component  | Tests Run   | Tests Failed |
|:-----------|:------------|:-----------------------------------------------|
| Server     | 948         | :white_check_mark: 0|
| Web Client | 123         | :warning: [2 (see details)(http://linktologs) |
| iOS Client | 78          | :warning: [3 (see details)](http://linktologs) |"}'

This entire string is being sent in the request.

Works with this,

If I break up the payload inside the php like so:

$body = '| Component  | Tests Run   | Tests Failed |\n|:-----------|:------------|:---------------------------------------------|\n| Server     | 948         | :white_check_mark: 0                         |\n| Web Client | 123         | :warning: [2 (see details)](http://linktologs) |\n| iOS Client | 78          | :warning: [3 (see details)](http://linktologs) |\n';

$payload = 'payload={"text": "';
$payload .= $body;
$payload .= '"}';

It works as expected.

The 400 Bad Request error might be caused by a malformed payload. Please can you add the payload you are sending to the question? — George, May 18 '17 at 08:09
@George Updated, the text is the table right from the mattermost example. — Mark Carpenter Jr, May 19 '17 at 13:59

Mark Carpenter Jr · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-22T19:57:32.123

2

The Solution -

The actual string for the text request needs to have /n delimiters.

Once I was able to get one request to work I was then able to refactor all the way to using the jQ's ajax request to send a payload to the webhook. I am still not 100% on the why or the hows.

This is the working JS:

var body = 'payload={"text":"| Component  | Tests Run   | Tests Failed |\n' +
'|:-----------|:------------|:---------------------------------------------|\n'+
'| Server     | 948         | :white_check_mark: 0                         |\n' +
'| Web Client | 123         | :warning: [2 (see details)](http://linktologs) |\n' +
'| iOS Client | 78          | :warning: [3 (see details)](http://linktologs) |\n"}';

$.ajax({
  type: 'POST',
  url: "http://dev2:8065/hooks/6isjcohwyibsf8kp5g9p6bcgoa",
  data: body
});

super simple, and what I was originally trying to acheive.

edited Jun 22 '17 at 19:57

answered May 19 '17 at 16:55

Mark Carpenter Jr

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I'm not certain about this, but based on the only differences I can see between your working and non-working values, it looks like you had a JSON value for `text` with actual new-lines in it, rather than `\n`s. I think that would be invalid JSON, and thus the cause of the 400 error response from the Mattermost server. The way you've got it working avoids the problem by not having any actual new lines in the JSON value. – George May 19 '17 at 20:17
@George I agree, the `\n`'s made the difference. – Mark Carpenter Jr May 22 '17 at 12:54

Mattermost incoming webhooks error, "Unable to parse incoming data"

1 Answers1