Webhook Idempotency: Handling Duplicate Events

Short summary

Duplicate webhook events from network timeouts and provider retries risk corrupting data and double-charging customers. Prevent this with three core principles: extract unique event IDs from payloads, maintain a deduplication store (PostgreSQL or Redis) to track processed events, and structure operations as idempotent by checking existing state before mutations. Return HTTP 200 immediately to stop retries and use database-level locking for safe concurrent processing.

• •Duplicate webhook events are inevitable—track them using unique event IDs and a deduplication store
• •Make operations idempotent: always check existing state before mutations to prevent double-charging
• •Return HTTP 200 before processing and use database locks to prevent race conditions safely

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