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Also worth calling out callbacks, which are just webhooks that aren't set out-of-band (i.e. plugging a URL into a settings page) but are set via a RESTful API call.

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Can I use a webhook to connect a substack newsletter to a Discord? I wanted to set it up such that when I release a new substack newsletter, an annoucnement gets pushed into a channel in my Discord server.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

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So in theory, yes, that would be a perfect application of webhooks. If Substack shot out a webhook whenever a new issue got published, then you'd be able to either (a) stand up a server that ingests that webhook and then moves it to Discord via the Discord API, (b) use something like Zapier to make it easier, or (c) if Discord somehow supported this natively, do it there.

Unfortunately Substack doesn't have webhooks yet so you're on your own.

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So can we describe Webhook as an async POST?

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That's an interesting way of thinking about it. I think the important thing about webhooks is that they're triggered by events on the provider's end, that's what makes them unique. Almost always, the webhook will have some sort of data in the body, so in that sense it is like a POST request. But the mechanics are different than REST APIs, so I'm reticent to describe them this way.

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