Meraki Webhooks with json-server

Quickly launch a JSON server to receive, store and process Meraki webhook Alerts.

Overview

Meraki Webhooks are a powerful and lightweight new way to subscribe to alerts sent from the Meraki Cloud when something happens. They include a JSON formatted message and are sent to a unique URL where they can be processed, stored or used to trigger powerful automations. This solution provides you with a rapid way to setup a hosted service capable of receiving and storing any webhook alert data.

Prerequisites

• NodeJS
• Meraki Dashboard
• Postman (optional)
• Ngrok (optional)

Install json-server

Begin by installing json-server globally on your system. This is a light-weight web server which uses a simple JSON file to store and retrieve data like a database. It then exposes default routes to save the data and provide a simple HTML front-end.

$ npm install -g json-server

Run

$ json-server merakialerts.json

The server will start with a few default routes and store the data into our merakialerts.json file.

All of the Meraki Alerts will be sent to the default http://localhost:3000/posts endpoint.

{^_^}/ hi!

  Oops, merakialerts.json doesn't seem to exist
  Creating merakialerts.json with some default data
  Loading merakialerts.json
  Done

  Resources
  http://localhost:3000/posts
  http://localhost:3000/comments
  http://localhost:3000/profile

  Home
  http://localhost:3000

Test with Postman

You can use Postman to quickly test any of the Meraki Alerts by sending mock data to your json-server.

Postman Collection

Install Collection

Push the “Run in Postman” button to add this collection to your instance. You will be prompted to install Postman if it is not already available.

Once the collection is added, update the {{ webhook - url }} environment variable with your json-server address:

http://localhost:3000/posts

Send Test Alert

The folders on the left will contain Meraki Alerts based on their respective categories. Select any one of the POST endpoints and then press the blue “Send” button to trigger the event.

View Alert Data with Postman

The Postman collection includes a few test endpoints for listing the data received by our json-server. When you run these endpoints, you will receive a JSON response matching the query.

View Alert Data with json-server

You can also use the built-in web page with json-server to view the data. Simply open your web browser to:

http://localhost:3000

Public Internet Access

In order for the Meraki cloud to send the alerts to the local address, you must make it publicly available. You can do this by either adjusting your network firewall rules or quickly spin up a local proxy to your local instance using ngrok.

$ ngrok http 3000
ngrok by @inconshreveable                                                                                                                                              (Ctrl+C to quit)

Session Status                online                                                                                                                                                  
Session Expires               7 hours, 59 minutes                                                                                                                                      
Version                       2.2.8                                                                                                                                                    
Region                        United States (us)                                                                                                                                      
Web Interface                 http://127.0.0.1:4040                                                                                                                                    
Forwarding                    http://6d78ac34.ngrok.io -> localhost:3000                                                                                                              
Forwarding                    https://6d78ac34.ngrok.io -> localhost:3000                                                                                                              
Connections                   ttl     opn     rt1     rt5     p50     p90                                                                                                              
                              0       0       0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00

 

Alternative Hosting Method

Use the json-server-heroku project to launch json-server with more options and easily deploy to a variety of free hosting services.

Meraki Alerts

Configure the Meraki Dashboard to send all Alerts by adding an HTTP server with the public URL of your server. In this example, we would use https://6d78ac34.ngrok.io for the URL.

1. Add HTTP servers by defining their unique URL and shared secret
   [ network-wide  > alerts ]
   
2. Configured HTTP servers can now be selected as a recipient for any alert within the dashboard
   [ network-wide  > alerts ]