Received an installation.created hook with no installation key

[efstajas]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

API

Body

Hey, something very odd happened today - we received a webhook with delivery ID 3b5e1970-7a24-11f1-880d-d28d47102517, topic installation, action created, but the body does not include the installation field at all (not undefined, not null, simply not present). This field according to the docs is required, and our system relies on it being present.

Am I missing something here or is this a bug?

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[gauntface]

I just experienced the same thing for installation_repositories.added event: https://docs.github.com/en/webhooks/webhook-events-and-payloads#installation_repositories

[efstajas]

We received several installation and installation_repositories_added hooks since that do have the installation field again - still would like to understand what happened here, and whether it's truly resolved. Is / was this simply a bug on GH side, or something we'll have to handle in the future?

[efstajas]

Welp, it's still ongoing. Delivery ID 59e35260-7a48-11f1-9cf2-9283e8fe1d9b, received ~23:10 CEST, is installation_repositories_added without installation once again.

[AhmadHassan-BTed]

It's totally a GitHub bug, and that field is mandatory.

It happens when a backend glitch malforms the payload right before it fires, sometimes caused by edge cases like a suspended account installing the app. Also, as you have the delivery ID, open a ticket with GitHub Support so they can dig into their logs. For now, just add a quick if check to drop or log payloads missing that key so it doesn't crash your server.

[efstajas]

This is GitHub support for these matters 😬

It happens when a backend glitch malforms the payload right before it fires, sometimes caused by edge cases like a suspended account installing the app

You seem to have more information than I could find - is this based on some official statement or an assumption? We haven't received a single malformed payload like this since we launched 6 months ago, until yesterday when we received two. And we've had plenty of suspended users - but we're generally handling those fine.

And yeah - it's not crashing our server, but causing an alert and requiring some manual fixing since our webhook ingestion generally relies on installation.

[AhmadHassan-BTed]

Yes, and honestly...that's just a classic GitHub backend glitch.

I’m just speaking from my personal experience here;
I’ve seen this exact behavior pop up before, and it's usually tied to weird race conditions or their internal systems hiccuping when trying to resolve the installation object for the webhook. I don't have some secret internal memo (maybe, hahaha), it's just that when you see mandatory fields vanish into thin air like that, it's never a problem on your end.

Also, as your server isn't crashing, you’re basically just stuck in the annoying loop of having to manually patch the data until they push a fix. Definitely keep that support ticket open, though; if you can give them those specific Delivery IDs, it helps their SREs actually trace the botched process in their logs. It sucks, but it’s just one of those things you have to wait for them to clean up.