# Webhooks - JSON Payload Header: content-type
**URL:** https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505
**Category:** Plex Media Server
**Tags:** webhooks
**Created:** [September 26, 2022, 6:24pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505 "2022-09-26T18:24:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@tmfink10](https://forums.plex.tv/u/tmfink10)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2022, 6:24pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/1 "2022-09-26T18:24:29Z")
Server Version#: 1.28.0.5999
I have been attempting to send a webhook to IFTTT. Sending it works well enough, but when it gets there it appears that there is no JSON payload. I used [https://webhook.site](https://webhook.site) to inspect the payload that Plex was sending and found that the header identifies the payload content-type as multipart/form-data instead of application/json, which inhibits the ability of IFTTT and other platforms to make assumptions about the data that is to follow, and thereby diminishes the richness of the payload. That is, I can’t parse the JSON.
Is there a reason that the JSON payload is not identified as application/json? Could it be?
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### Author:  [@jfklingler](https://forums.plex.tv/u/jfklingler)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2022, 1:02pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/2 "2022-09-27T13:02:50Z")
I’ve run into this too. The plex webhook documentation is entirely inadequate. Maybe it just hasn’t been updated in two years, I don’t know. I’ve found posts all over the place about people trying to figure out why plex webhooks don’t work and it’s always because the requests are not actually json, they’re form-data. No standard webhook receiver in existence expects a multipart/form-data request. There’s no mention of this on the docs and I’ve been unable to figure out a way to disable this.
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### Author:  [@pshanew](https://forums.plex.tv/u/pshanew)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2022, 1:18pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/3 "2022-09-27T13:18:50Z")
The thing is, it truly is sending multipart form data, not just a JSON payload.
The first part is the JSON payload and it is identified as such. The second part is an image, which is also identified as such.
I agree that the documentation could be better here, but the payloads are what they are. It’s completely legitimate to encapsulate multiple parts in a payload.
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### Author:  [@jfklingler](https://forums.plex.tv/u/jfklingler)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2022, 1:19pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/4 "2022-09-27T13:19:27Z")
It’s not even difficult to find reports right here on the plex forums. Plex employees never seem to respond to these though, which I can only assume means they know there’s a problem and they aren’t going to address it.
Specifically mentioning content type:
> [@Webhooks stopped working](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-stopped-working/715579):
>
> Server Version#: Player Version#: 1.31.1.2262-74fdc6b7, other players Plex Pass added a webhook “[https://myserver.com/?token=abc”](https://myserver.com/?token=abc%E2%80%9D) I used to have webhooks working fine. Recently I noticed webhooks were no longer firing. I have put in a print command, console.log(‘webhook!’), at the start of my webhook router and am getting nothing! router.post( ‘/webhook’ , multer().any(), function (req, res) { console.log(‘webhook!’) }
> [@Webhooks post does not correctly identify the Content-Type header as application/json](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-post-does-not-correctly-identify-the-content-type-header-as-application-json/806606):
>
> Server Version#: 1.28.1.6104 Player Version#: I’ve set up an API endpoint in AWS API Gateway to trigger an AWS Lambda function so I can control some home automation via webhooks. Unfortunately, when AWS API Gateway receives the POST data from the webhook, the Content-Type header isn’t set to application/json. By default, API Gateway takes the body data for any request which the Content-Type header hasn’t been set and base64 encodes the data instead of treating the data like JSON data. Ideally …
Just confused because webhooks don’t work:
> [@Library Webhooks never fire](https://forums.plex.tv/t/library-webhooks-never-fire/754867):
>
> Problem: library.\* webhooks do not fire media.\* all work fine Setup: Host is Ubuntu 20.04 Installed using docker image via docker-compose. plex: image: plexinc/pms-docker container\_name: plex network\_mode: host volumes: - ./plex/config:/config - ./plex/tmp:/transcode - ../storage/videos:/data:ro - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro restart: always Push notifications: Enabled Webhooks (server): Enabl…
> [@Plex Server Webhooks not being fired up](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-server-webhooks-not-being-fired-up/747780):
>
> Hello, my plex is not firing any webhooks I add I have Plex Version 1.24.3.5033 I have PlexPass I have Enabled Webhooks in options I have Enabled Push Notifications (as I found suggestions on other threads) I have tested connection to webhook (it works fine from server console with wget for example, so connection is OK) I have tested it with 3 different webhook endpoints, including webhook.site Plex logs (console) say nothing about hook being fired up (and it should)
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### Author:  [@jfklingler](https://forums.plex.tv/u/jfklingler)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2022, 1:26pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/5 "2022-09-27T13:26:08Z")
I didn’t say it wasn’t actually form-data. There’s not technically anything wrong with the webhook request. The problem is that a multipart/form-data request doesn’t work with IFTTT, trakt, or basically any other standard webhook receiver because they all expect application/json. They made this change, didn’t document it, didn’t announce it (not that I could find), didn’t add a switch to only send application/json, and thus broke webhooks all over the place and left it to users to individually spend hours debugging what happened and then basically ignore all requests for help/explanation.
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### Author:  [@pshanew](https://forums.plex.tv/u/pshanew)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2022, 1:46pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/6 "2022-09-27T13:46:19Z")
As I said, I agree that the documentation could be better. However, the examples they provide [here](https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002267687-webhooks/#toc-4) use multer specifically to handle multi-part form data. This article hasn’t changed in over three years; the most recent change to the Github repos referenced were over three years ago (with two of the projects not being changed in 5 and 6 years.
It’s been known for years that multi-part form data needed to be considered when handling Plex’s web hook events, or at least it should have been. A naive implementation on a third-party’s part doesn’t necessarily imply a failure on Plex’s.
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### Author:  [@jfklingler](https://forums.plex.tv/u/jfklingler)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2022, 2:16pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/7 "2022-09-27T14:16:32Z")
> examples they provide [here](https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002267687-webhooks/#toc-4) use multer specifically to handle multi-part form data
Granted, as long as you’re familiar enough with JS to just know what multer is (I didn’t until you mentioned it) and notice the two lines of code referencing it, then yes, it’s completely obvious that they’re sending multipart/form-data.
> It’s been known for years … or at least it should have been.
How? This is the actual problem. You can call code that expects a webhook request to be JSON naive (and you’re not wrong), basically call people ignorant (paraphrasing - “the docs could be better, but people should just know this”), but that doesn’t fix the documentation that’s been lying to people for “over three years”.
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### Author:  [@SwiftPanda16](https://forums.plex.tv/u/SwiftPanda16)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2022, 2:26pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/8 "2022-09-27T14:26:24Z")
The documentation does say it will be multipart.
> As stated above, the payload is sent in JSON format inside a multipart HTTP POST request. For the `media.play` and `media.rate` events, a second part of the POST request contains a JPEG thumbnail for the media.
You can’t use `application/json` when the body also contains an image. It has to be `multipart/form-data`.
Side note: The support article from 2018 also said it is multipart data.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180705054544/https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002267687-webhooks/](https://web.archive.org/web/20180705054544/https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002267687-webhooks/)
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### Author:  [@jfklingler](https://forums.plex.tv/u/jfklingler)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2022, 3:10pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/9 "2022-09-27T15:10:04Z")
Good grief. I’ve read that page a number of times now and missed that every time. That’s totally on me - @pshanew (and everyone, really) I apologize for my attitude.
So, trying to read more carefully now, is it true that, at least right now, `media.play` and `media.rate` are the only events that are multipart? I suppose the wise course of action is to assume any event could be either json or form-data and handle accordingly.
As background, I was trying to hook plex into argo events. Their webhook event source apparently only supports application/json and I was unfortunately testing by just playing media - no other events happened to fire while I had the receiver running. So it looked like nothing was working. Switching on debug logs on the receiver led me to the json parse failure and then my annoyance with plex.
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### Author:  [@tmfink10](https://forums.plex.tv/u/tmfink10)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2022, 3:10pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/10 "2022-09-27T15:10:15Z")
You’re right - there’s nothing technically wrong about what they’re doing. However, that doesn’t mean it’s the best way, or the way that’s right for the customer. Once I figured out what was going on, I spent hours looking for a platform that would accept form-data in the webhook request - I’ve found none. My solution is going to be to implement tautulli, which is fine. It also comes with some other features that would be nice to have that won’t require me to parse the JSON on the receiving end.
All I’m saying is that a toggle would let Plex play nice with all of the great services available to us, and an update to the documentation to call this out in a more obvious way would be welcome.
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### Author:  [@SwiftPanda16](https://forums.plex.tv/u/SwiftPanda16)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2022, 3:18pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/11 "2022-09-27T15:18:24Z")
> [@jfklingler](#):
>
> So, trying to read more carefully now, is it true that, at least right now, `media.play` and `media.rate` are the only events that are multipart?
I would assume all payloads are `multipart/form-data` to be consistent, regardless of if there is an image or not.
> [@tmfink10](#):
>
> My solution is going to be to implement tautulli, which is fine.
I also recommended doing webhooks through Tautulli instead. 🙂
Pros:
- Doesn’t require Plex Pass.
- Can customize the json payload (and ability to change the `Content-Type` header to something else).
- Can filter events using conditions before sending instead of parsing on the receiving end.
Cons:
- Might not be as quick as Plex’s webhooks because of the intermediary processing.
- Takes a bit more effort to set up.
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### Author:  [@tmfink10](https://forums.plex.tv/u/tmfink10)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2022, 3:42pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/12 "2022-09-27T15:42:55Z")
Yes, indeed. The webhooks functionality pushed me over the edge to deciding to adopt it. It would be nice if Plex put just a bit of effort into making this more adaptable, but c’est la vie.
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### Author:  [@jfklingler](https://forums.plex.tv/u/jfklingler)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2022, 12:47am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/13 "2022-09-30T00:47:32Z")
Ok. I didn’t want to set up Tautulli (I might someday, but not right now) and I couldn’t find anything simple that already did this so I fixed my own problem. This is a dead-simple proxy that accepts either `multipart/form-data` or `application/json` requests from Plex. For the multipart requests, it throws the `thumb` on the floor and forwards the `payload`. For JSON requests, it just forwards them. Working like a charm so far.
> **[GitHub - jfklingler/plex-webhook-proxy: Unwrapping Plex multipart requests for...](https://github.com/jfklingler/plex-webhook-proxy)**
>
> Unwrapping Plex multipart requests for a better tomorrow. - GitHub - jfklingler/plex-webhook-proxy: Unwrapping Plex multipart requests for a better tomorrow.
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### Author:  [@tmfink10](https://forums.plex.tv/u/tmfink10)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2022, 8:49pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/14 "2022-09-30T20:49:01Z")
Nice! I set up tautulli and it was a piece of cake. Especially if using IFTTT, it allows me to use the free tier instead of the paid tiers (needed to parse JSON). Kudos to you though for fixing this problem. This would definitely work for the original and intended use case, so you get the Solution award. Cheers m8!
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### Author:  [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2022, 8:49pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/webhooks-json-payload-header-content-type/812505/15 "2022-12-29T20:49:33Z")
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