This article covers the push feed enhancements, integration requirements, and the transition timeline to ensure your systems stay up to date.
What’s the push feed?
The push feed is a service we've built from scratch. In addition to enabling blazing fast updates, we also took this opportunity to implement the most requested improvements.
The push feed is a high-performance service built from the ground up. In addition to enabling blazing-fast updates, it includes our most requested improvements.
The following features are included in Limited (and are also available in Extended):
Program items
Sale start & online / door sale end times
Accounting ID
Technical Contact: You can provide an email address per publication channel so Stager can directly notify your developers of feed upgrades or changes.
Granular Status: The soldOut status is provided per ticket type rather than per event.
Door Sales: Ticket amounts and soldOut status for door sales are included.
Improved Media: There is a clear distinction between the Main image and Additional images.
Publication Control: You can set different publish dates for 'My publication channels' and 'Partner channels,' allowing you to publish event info to your own channels before notifying partners.
Specific to Extended:
Expected visitor counts: This additional data point is included exclusively in the Extended feed.
What data is available per ticket type?
In limited mode
the soldOut status for online and door tickets
In extended mode
the total ticket amount
the available ticket amount
reserved ticket amount
the soldOut status
the soldOutOverride, which you can set in the backstage with a ticket type’s “Sold out” checkbox.
How do I manage a custom integration?
If you have built a custom integration with our feed, that integration needs to be adjusted. This is something technical and needs to be done by your web developer. Check out the attached documentation on how to integrate with the feed.
How do I update the WordPress Jeero plugin?
Many Stager organizers that have a WordPress CMS connected with our feed, do so with the Jeero plugin. Jeero offers seamless integration with Stager and all popular WordPress calendar plugins. To change to the push feed with Jeero, follow these few steps.
If you're already working with Jeero, the transition will be quick and hassle-free. If you aren't yet working with Jeero but desire an easy switch, get in touch with Jeroen today!
What if I use other plugins?
If you’re using a different plugin to connect your website’s CMS to the feed, please reach out to your web developer.
How do I use the Calendar feed?
Stager offers a calendar feed. If you connect this to your own calendar app on your phone, for example, you will see all events published to this channel in your own calendar. There is a link to share all events shared to this channel and this can be adjusted per event label.
You will find all the different links per label via Settings - Integrations - Calendar feed. Check the correct label for each event on the 'Publicity' tab and check that you want to publish this event information to 'Calendar feed'.
How do I publish event info to Stager channels?
You can publish event information from Stager to external websites. This lets you keep your own website, or other marketing platforms, up to date using the data in Stager. The feed includes text, images, video, location, times, and ticket sales information. This article explains the technical steps to connect the Stager feed to a website.
Want to publish event data to partners we’ve already integrated with? Read more about Partner publication channels instead.
How do I create a Stager publication channel?
Go to Settings - Integrations - My publication channels. To create a new channel, click the '+ New publication channel' button. Here you can enter relevant information about your new channel.
Make sure the channel has a name. Indicate which permissions a publication channel receives. There are two options:
Limited: All event information entered in the Publicity tab, plus basic ticketing info, such as which tickets are for sale (and their current status determined by Stager) and how much the tickets cost.
Extended: All event information as entered in Publicity plus the project type, all ticketing info (including sold, reserved and available ticket counts per ticket group, allowing you to decide what status you show) and which link members should use.
Enter a webhook URL and an email address of the person or company creating this link. It allows Stager to communicate technical details to the the right people.
After clicking save, you will be taken to the publication channel overview page. There, you will see three blocks - the general information that you just entered, together with a new push feed block.
The push feed block allows you to fully synchronise all of the data published to this channel. This block also displays the last error that we have received back from the endpoint to help you troubleshoot any issues.
How do I sync event data to my website?
Go to an event in your calendar and open the Publicity tab. Here you enter event info. Scroll to the bottom and check the box with the correct publication channel. You'll see the name of the channel under 'My publication channels'. Make sure to publish or schedule to publish the info to the correct channel.
What are the technical steps for the Stager push feed?
The Stager feed is a push-feed implemented using a webhook which users can specify. Changes in the event trigger a push to your webhook providing you with updated event data. You first need an endpoint on your own website that we can push all information to. To help you, the push feed comes with it's own documentation:
You can see a single web hook, together with 6 different possible JSON schemas. These schemas are the different messages that we push to your endpoint. They are always combined with a relevant message type string. The OrganizationSync messageContent, for example, is always combined with the ORGANIZATION_SYNC messageType . Because of this, it is recommended to first parse the messageType in your integration, and then properly deserialize the messageContent.
We also recommend implementing a queue mechanism to make sure that your endpoint can handle busy moments (such as peak sales, where many messages can be sent in a short timespan) and large messages (such as the nightly sync). This would make sure the contents of the message are processed outside of the request cycle, and thus do not hold up any subsequent requests or cause time-outs.
In the publication channel overview page, you will see a testing block. This has a handful of important fields. First, there is an authentication token. This is quite important by itself, and is explained further down in this article. Under that, you can see a 'Send all data' button. Use this to test you integration an to sync your baseline data (everything published at the time).
Next, you can see a "View logs" button. Clicking it will take you to a week long (split up by day) request log of the selected channel. Each log entry can be opened to see the request information, response (if received) and of course the payload. Last but not least, we have the last error field, which displays the last encountered error. This acts similarly to the log without you having to comb through it to find errors.
How do I verify Stager webhook signatures?
As data provided by the Stager Push Feed will most likely be used to display your Stager events and any related content directly on your website, we recommend you set up your application to verify that incoming data is sent by Stager and not a different party. This makes sure that no 'fake' data gets through to your website, preventing in from being defaced.
To help you with this, Stager will sign all outgoing requests to your application with an X-Signature HTTP header. This signature is created using the full body of the request sent to your endpoint. It uses the HMAC-SHA256 hashing algorithm and the authentication token of your channel as the secret key.
You can easily verify the signature using the request body, the authentication token of your channel, the signature itself (the value of the X-Signature header) and any cryptography library available within your chosen tech stack that has support for the HMAC-SHA256 algorithm.
Where can I find Stager API code samples?
We have a limited list of code samples to guide you through verifying requests received at your Stager webhook endpoint.
Node.js / Express
Node.js / Express
import express from "express";
import bodyParser from "body-parser";
import crypto from "crypto";
const HMAC_ALGORITHM = "sha256";
const HMAC_ENCODING = "hex";
// The authenticity token, found on the selected channel page.
// Assumed that it is set as an enviroment variable,
// which is recommended, as the token is considered a secret.
const HMAC_SECRET = process.env.SECRET_TOKEN;
// Recommended as messages can get quite large
// (Especially the nightly full sync message)
app.use(bodyParser.json({ limit: "50mb" }));
// Webhook endpoint - receives push feed requests from Stager
app.post("/stager-feed", (req, res) => {
// Prepare required data
const body = req.body;
const bodyString = JSON.stringify(body);
const stagerSignature = req.header("X-Signature");
// Create Hmac object, generate control signature
hmacObject = crypto.createHmac(HMAC_ALGORITHM, HMAC_SECRET);
hmacObject.update(bodyString);
const controlSignature = hmacObject.digest(HMAC_ENCODING);
// Verify signature provided by Stager
if (stagerSignature === controlSignature) {
// Signature valid, message is safe to process
// ...
// Close connection with a 200 response
res.status(200).send("Request received and message processed!");
} else {
// Signature invalid, message ignored
// Close connection with a 401 response
res.status(401).send("Request validation failed!");
}
});
Kotlin / Play
Kotlin / Play
package controllers
import javax.crypto.Mac
import javax.crypto.spec.SecretKeySpec
import org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Hex
import play.mvc.Controller
import play.mvc.NoAuthenticityToken
import play.mvc.results.Forbidden
import play.mvc.results.Ok
import play.mvc.results.Result
// The authentication token, found in the Stager Backstage
// Assumed that it is set as an environment variable
// named "authenticationToken"
// This is recommended, as the token is considered a secret
const val AUTHENTICATION_TOKEN_NAME = "authenticationToken"
const val HMAC_ALGORITHM = "HmacSHA256"
const val SIGNATURE_HEADER = "X-Signature"
class StagerFeedRequestHandler : Controller() {
@NoAuthenticityToken
fun handle(): Result {
val body = request.body
val bodyBytes = body.readAllBytes()
val headers = request.headers
val stagerSignature = headers[SIGNATURE_HEADER]?.value()
// Verify signature provided by Stager
return if (validateSignature(bodyBytes, stagerSignature)) {
// Signature valid, message is safe to process
// ...
Ok() // Close connection with a 200 response
} else {
// Signature invalid, message ignored
// Close connection with a 403 response
Forbidden("Request validation failed!")
}
}
private fun validateSignature(
body: ByteArray,
signature: String?
): Boolean {
// Check whether signature is present
return signature?.let { // Signature present, verify
// Construct SecretKeySpec object from the authentication token
val secretKeyEnvVar = System.getenv(AUTHENTICATION_TOKEN_NAME)
val secretKeyBytes = Hex.decodeHex(secretKeyEnvVar.toCharArray())
val secretKey = SecretKeySpec(secretKeyBytes, HMAC_ALGORITHM)
// Create and initiate the Mac instance
val hmacInstance = Mac.getInstance(HMAC_ALGORITHM)
hmacInstance.init(secretKey)
// Generate control signature and the Stager signature against it
val controlSignature = hmacInstance.doFinal(body)
return controlSignature.contentEquals(secretKeyBytes)
} ?: run {
false // Signature missing, default to invalid
}
}
}
What are the Stager webhook response requirements?
The push feed expect a 2XX response back within a specified time limit. For ORGANZIATION_SYNC, the time is 30 seconds. For all other messages, it is 10 seconds. If no response is received within this time, the connection is terminated and considered failed due to timeout. This is logged as an error both within Stager (to be handled internally) as well as the backstage (the "view logs" page and the last error block) for you to see.
Other responses are also allowed (for example, specific error messages such as 403 in case verification fails) to help aid debugging. These will be handled as errors though.
What actions trigger a Stager API push update?
There are 3 different ways that the feed pushes messages to your endpoint:
Every night around 2AM CET a full sync message is pushed. This message contains all events connected to the channel together with their publication data, program items and ticket groups. This acts as a fallback in case other messages are missed, meaning that you will have up-to-date event and ticket information at least every night.
When an event has passed its publication time. Whenever an event passes it's publication time, it will automatically be pushed to all relevant channels.
When a relevant action occurs within Stager, be it caused by you or one of your customers/ticket buyers. There are a couple dozen places in Stager where you or a ticket buyer can affect your publishing data. In each of these cases, a message is sent. This message is always the smallest possible one from the 6 different types that can be sent.
The 6 different message types are triggered as follows:
SYNC_ORGANIZATIONNightly sync, executed every night at around 2AM CET.
'Send all data' button, located in Settings - Integrations - My publication channels - Channel.
'Activate channel' button. Only available when a channel is inactive, located in Settings - Integrations - My publication channels - Channel.
DELETE_ORGANIZATIONWhen an organization is deleted (generally only relevant for aggregators).
'Deactivate channel' button. Only available when a channel is active, located in Settings - Integrations - My publication channels - Channel.
UPDATE_EVENTSWhenever the publishing time of an event is reached.
When an event is restored from the Trash Can (in Account - Trash Can - Events)
Single events updates:
Any edits made to the Main tab.
Any edits made to an associated program item in the Program tab.
Any edits made to the Publicity tab.
Any edits made to the Tickets tab.
Multiple event updates (all events connected to a particular entity):
Any edits made to Locations and Spaces (in Settings - Planning).
Any edits made to Event types (in Settings - Planning).
Any edits made to Project types (in Settings - Planning).
Any edits made to Event labels (in Settings - Marketing).
Any edits made to Customer interests (in Settings - Marketing).
DELETE_EVENTSMain tab exceptions:
When the status of an event is changed from publishable (Confirmed, To be confirmed or Cancelled) to an unpublishable (Option) the DELETE_EVENT message is sent as the event is then considered deleted for the feed.
Publicity tab exceptions:
When a publicity channel is deselected from the list, the event is considered deleted from said channel, and this message is sent.
When the publication status is changed to not (yet) published and the event had already been published previously, it is considered deleted from the feed and this message is sent.
'Delete event' button on the Main tab of an event (in case of cancelling, the previously mentioned exception counts).
UPDATE_TICKET_GROUPSSingle ticket group updated in the details on the Tickets tab.
Order paid and completed:
In the online ticket shop, after getting through the payment flow.
On the door sales screen, after successful sale.
Reservation cancelled/expired.
Refund processed.
Ticket type updated in Settings - Ticketing - Ticket types.
DELETE_TICKET_GROUPTicket group deleted from an event.
Ticket type deleted with ticket groups connected to it.