CLI Advanced Usage

The Webhook Simulator CLI tool offers several advanced features and usage patterns that can enhance your webhook testing and development workflow. This guide covers some of the more advanced topics and best practices.

Environment Management Coming Soon

The CLI supports different environments (development and production). You can switch between environments by modifying the Environment field in your configuration file ($HOME/.ws-cli/config.yaml).

Environment: production  # or development

The environment affects the API and WebSocket URLs used by the CLI.

Custom Configuration

You can manually edit the config.yaml file to customize various aspects of the CLI behavior. Be cautious when editing this file, as incorrect values may cause the CLI to malfunction. But we don't recommend editing the configuration file directly unless you're familiar with its structure.

WebSocket Reconnection

The CLI implements an automatic reconnection mechanism for WebSocket connections. If the connection is lost, it will attempt to reconnect with exponential backoff.

Verbose Logging Coming Soon

To enable more detailed logging for debugging purposes, you can set an environment variable:

export WS_CLI_DEBUG=true
ws-cli listen

This will output additional information about WebSocket connections, API requests, and internal processes.

Bulk Event Triggering Coming Soon

For stress testing or batch processing, you can create a script to trigger multiple events in succession:

#!/bin/bash
for i in {1..100}
do
   ws-cli trigger Stripe customer.created
   sleep 1
done

Integrating with CI/CD Pipelines Coming Soon

You can incorporate the Webhook Simulator CLI into your continuous integration and deployment pipelines. For example, in a GitLab CI configuration:

stages:
  - test

webhook_test:
  stage: test
  script:
    - brew install mmpsoftware/ws-cli/ws-cli
    - ws-cli login
    - ws-cli listen --forward-to http://app:3000/webhooks &
    - sleep 5  # Give the listener time to start
    - ws-cli trigger Stripe customer.created
    - # Run your tests here

Using with Docker

If you're using Docker for your development environment, you can include the Webhook Simulator CLI in your Dockerfile:

FROM node:14

# Install Homebrew
RUN /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

# Install Webhook Simulator CLI
RUN brew tap mmpsoftware/ws-cli && brew install ws-cli

# Your other Dockerfile instructions...

Webhook Security Testing Coming Soon

Use the CLI to test your webhook security measures:

1. Try triggering events without authentication.
2. Modify the payload before forwarding to test your payload validation.
3. Test your rate limiting by triggering many events quickly.

Performance Profiling

You can use the CLI in combination with performance profiling tools to measure the latency and throughput of your webhook handling:

time ws-cli trigger Stripe customer.created

Best Practices

1. Version Control: Keep your CLI version up to date with brew upgrade ws-cli.
2. Secure Storage: Treat your config.yaml file as sensitive and don't commit it to version control.
3. Logging: Implement comprehensive logging in your webhook handlers to make debugging easier when using the CLI.
4. Testing: Create a suite of tests that use the CLI to verify your webhook integration from end to end.

By leveraging these advanced features and best practices, you can significantly enhance your webhook development and testing processes, leading to more robust and reliable integrations.