Test Actions Event

This guide shows you how to leverage the ZITADEL actions feature to react to events in your ZITADEL instance. You can use the actions feature to create a target that will be called when a specific event occurs. This is useful for integrating with other systems or for triggering workflows based on events in ZITADEL.

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have everything set up correctly.

• You need to be at least a ZITADEL IAM_OWNER
• Your ZITADEL instance needs to have the actions feature enabled.

info

Note that this guide assumes that ZITADEL is running on the same machine as the target and can be reached via localhost. In case you are using a different setup, you need to adjust the target URL accordingly and will need to make sure that the target is reachable from ZITADEL.

Start example target

To test the actions feature, you need to create a target that will be called when an event occurs. You will need to implement a listener that can receive HTTP requests and process the events. For this example, we will use a simple Go HTTP server that will print the received events to standard output.

info

The signature of the received request can be checked, please refer to the example for more information on how to.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"io"
	"net/http"
)

// webhook HandleFunc to read the request body and then print out the contents
func webhook(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
	// read the body content
	sentBody, err := io.ReadAll(req.Body)
	if err != nil {
		// if there was an error while reading the body return an error
		http.Error(w, "error", http.StatusInternalServerError)
		return
	}
	defer req.Body.Close()
	// print out the read content
	fmt.Println(string(sentBody))
}

func main() {
	// handle the HTTP call under "/webhook"
	http.HandleFunc("/webhook", webhook)

	// start an HTTP server with the before defined function to handle the endpoint under "http://localhost:8090"
	http.ListenAndServe(":8090", nil)
}

Create target

As you see in the example above the target is created with HTTP and port '8090' and if we want to use it as webhook, the target can be created as follows:

See Create a target for more detailed information.

curl -L -X POST 'https://$CUSTOM-DOMAIN/v2beta/actions/targets' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-H 'Accept: application/json' \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>' \
--data-raw '{
  "name": "local webhook",
  "restWebhook": {
    "interruptOnError": true    
  },
  "endpoint": "http://localhost:8090/webhook",
  "timeout": "10s"
}'

Save the returned ID to set in the execution.

Set execution

To configure ZITADEL to call the target when an event occurs, you need to set an execution and define the event condition.

See Set an execution for more detailed information.

curl -L -X PUT 'https://$CUSTOM-DOMAIN/v2beta/actions/executions' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-H 'Accept: application/json' \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>' \
--data-raw '{
    "condition": {
        "event": {
            "event": "user.human.added"
        }
    },
    "targets": [
        {
            "target": "<TargetID returned>"
        }
    ]
}'

Example call

Now that you have set up the target and execution, you can test it by creating a user through the Console UI or by calling the ZITADEL API to create a human user.

curl -L -X PUT 'https://$CUSTOM-DOMAIN/v2/users/human' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-H 'Accept: application/json' \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>' \
--data-raw '{
    "userId": {
        "givenName": "Test",
        "familyName": "User"
    },
    "email": {
        "email": "example@test.com"
    }
}'

Your server should now print out something like the following. Check out the Sent information Event payload description.

{
  "aggregateID": "313014806065971608",
  "aggregateType": "user",
  "resourceOwner": "312909075211944344",
  "instanceID": "312909075211878808",
  "version": "v2",
  "sequence": 1,
  "event_type": "user.human.added",
  "created_at": "2025-03-27T10:22:43.262665+01:00",
  "userID": "312909075212468632",
  "event_payload": "eyJ1c2VyTmFtZSI6ImV4YW1wbGVAdGVzdC5jb20iLCJmaXJzdE5hbWUiOiJUZXN0IiwibGFzdE5hbWUiOiJVc2VyIiwiZGlzcGxheU5hbWUiOiJUZXN0IFVzZXIiLCJwcmVmZXJyZWRMYW5ndWFnZSI6InVuZCIsImVtYWlsIjoiZXhhbXBsZUB0ZXN0LmNvbSJ9"
}

The event_payload is base64 encoded and has the following content:

{
  "userName": "example@test.com",
  "firstName": "Test",
  "lastName": "User",
  "displayName": "Test User",
  "preferredLanguage": "und",
  "email": "example@test.com"
}

Conclusion

You have successfully set up a target and execution to react to events in your ZITADEL instance. This feature can now be used to integrate with your existing systems to create custom workflows or automate tasks based on events in ZITADEL. Find more information about the actions feature in the API documentation.