I’m working with Google Drive API and trying to set up webhook notifications using the changes watch endpoint. When I subscribe my URL to get notifications about file changes, the webhook calls come through but they don’t have much useful information in the headers.
The main issue I’m running into is with handling multiple notifications at the same time. I store a pageToken to track changes, but when several webhooks arrive together, I sometimes end up processing the same change more than once.
Has anyone found a reliable method to identify exactly what changed in each individual webhook notification? I need to avoid duplicate processing when multiple notifications come in at the same time.
Had this exact problem last year. Debouncing works great with the deduplication tricks others mentioned. Instead of processing webhooks right away, I batch them with a 2-3 second delay. This lets multiple notifications for the same change pile up before I actually process anything. Here’s the thing - Google Drive loves sending multiple webhook notifications for what’s really just one change, especially when files get modified quickly. During that debounce window, I collect all the notifications, then make one call to changes.list with my stored pageToken. Cut down duplicate processing big time and made everything way more stable when there’s heavy file activity.
same prob! i used Redis too for caching the processed change IDs. it’s got a short TTL so when a webhook hits, i check if that ID’s saved. if it is, i skip it. also helps to put a tiny delay b4 procesing.
Google Drive webhooks just tell you something changed - they don’t give you the actual change details. You need a proper sync strategy instead of trying to pull specific changes from each webhook. I’ve had the best luck with a single-threaded queue. When a webhook comes in, queue it with a timestamp and process them one by one. This kills the race condition you’re hitting with pageTokens. For detecting changes, call the changes.list endpoint once per processing cycle using your stored pageToken - doesn’t matter how many webhooks triggered it. The API returns all changes since your last sync, then you update your pageToken. Don’t try mapping individual webhooks to specific changes. It’s unreliable because the notification system batches things together.