Webhook alert

A webhook alert is a platform sending a message to a web address the reader supplies when a condition is met, instead of — or as well as — showing it on screen. It turns a condition defined on a chart into an input for some other piece of software, which is why it is the usual bridge between analysis in one place and action in another. It is worth understanding as fire-and-forget. The sender generally learns whether the message was accepted and nothing about what was done with it, deliveries can arrive late, out of order or more than once, and a message that fails may or may not be retried. The address is also the only thing standing between the alert and anyone else who learns it, since a receiver has no way of telling who sent a request unless the request proves it. A receiver that acts on what arrives therefore has to authenticate it and to tolerate seeing the same message twice.