---
title: "Test Asana Webhooks Locally | WebhookRelay"
meta:
  "og:description": "Test Asana webhooks locally and receive them on localhost without deploying. Inspect the real payload, forward to your handler, and verify the signature."
  "og:title": "Test Asana Webhooks Locally"
  description: "Test Asana webhooks locally and receive them on localhost without deploying. Inspect the real payload, forward to your handler, and verify the signature."
---

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# **Test Asana Webhooks Locally**

Test Asana webhooks locally and receive them on localhost without deploying. Inspect the real payload, forward to your handler, and verify the signature.

![Test Asana Webhooks Locally (Receive Asana Webhooks on localhost)](https://webhookrelay.com/images/blog/heroes/localhost.jpg)

You are building a Asana integration and you need to watch your handler react to a real event. The problem hits immediately: Asana will only POST to a **public URL**, and your handler is running on `localhost:8080`. Asana has no way to reach it.

The usual workarounds are slow. Deploying to a staging environment for every code change kills your iteration speed. Copying a sample payload out of the docs into curl gives you a _guess_ at the real request, not the exact headers and body Asana actually sends. What you really want is to **test Asana webhooks locally** — real events, hitting your local handler, on a URL that does not change every time you restart.

This guide shows how to do exactly that.

## [Why testing Asana webhooks locally is tricky](#why-testing-asana-webhooks-locally-is-tricky)

A webhook is just an HTTP request that Asana sends to a URL when something changes. Asana lives on the public internet; your dev machine usually does not. It sits behind a router, a corporate firewall, or both, with no public IP and no inbound ports open.

So you need something in the middle: a public endpoint Asana can hit that relays each request down to your laptop without you opening a single firewall port. That is what [Webhook Relay](https://my.webhookrelay.com/register) does — and unlike a random tunnel URL, the endpoint is **stable**, so you configure Asana once and never touch it again.

## [Step 1: Inspect the real payload with Webhook Bin](#step-1-inspect-the-real-payload-with-webhook-bin)

Before you write any handler code, find out what Asana actually sends. Open the free [Webhook Bin](https://webhookrelay.com/webhook-bin/) — no signup — and you get an instant public URL.

1. Copy the Webhook Bin URL.
2. Create the webhook via the Asana API (`POST /webhooks`) with the resource to watch and your URL. Asana immediately sends a handshake you must answer.
3. Trigger a real event and inspect the captured request.

You will see the full body and every header. Asana first sends an empty **handshake** request carrying an `X-Hook-Secret` header — echo that header back in your response to confirm the endpoint. After that, each event delivery is signed and the body contains an `events` array describing what changed.

Now you know the exact shape of the data before writing a line of code. For more on this approach, see [How to test webhooks](https://webhookrelay.com/blog/how-to-test-webhooks/) and [What is a webhook](https://webhookrelay.com/blog/what-is-webhook/).

## [Step 2: Forward the events to localhost with the relay agent](#step-2-forward-the-events-to-localhost-with-the-relay-agent)

Once you know the payload, route those same events into your local handler. [Sign up for Webhook Relay](https://my.webhookrelay.com/register), install the `relay` agent (CLI or Docker), and create a bucket — say `asana`. The bucket gives you a stable public input endpoint.

Start forwarding to your local server:

```
relay forward --bucket asana http://localhost:8080/webhook
```

The agent opens an **outbound** connection to Webhook Relay and streams every incoming request down to `http://localhost:8080/webhook`. Because the connection is outbound, there are **no firewall ports to open and no public IP needed** — this works from your laptop, behind a corporate proxy, or inside a Kubernetes cluster. Running in Docker? The same command works in the official `webhookrelay/webhookrelayd` image. Full details are in the [localhost forwarding docs](https://webhookrelay.com/docs/webhooks/internal/localhost/).

Now point the Asana webhook at your Webhook Relay endpoint (or create it there from the start), trigger an event, and watch it arrive on `localhost`.

## [Asana-specific configuration and quirks](#asana-specific-configuration-and-quirks)

A few Asana details worth knowing:

- **Programmatic only:** create webhooks via `POST /webhooks` in the Asana API, not a settings page.
- **Handshake:** echo the `X-Hook-Secret` header on the first request or the webhook won't activate. A bin shows you the exact value.
- **Payload:** an `events` array of changes — you call the API to fetch full resource details.

## [Step 3: Verify the Asana webhook signature](#step-3-verify-the-asana-webhook-signature)

Asana's setup has two parts. On creation it sends a handshake with an **`X-Hook-Secret`** header that you must **echo back** in your response (status 200) — save that secret. Afterwards, every delivery is signed: Asana computes an **HMAC-SHA256** (hex) of the **raw body** with that secret and sends it in the **`X-Hook-Signature`** header. Recompute and compare in constant time.

To sanity-check an HMAC implementation, paste a captured body, your secret, and the received signature into the free [HMAC signature verifier](https://webhookrelay.com/hmac-verification/). For language-specific code and the common pitfalls (reading the body _after_ a JSON parser has already consumed it, timing-safe comparison), read [Verify a webhook signature](https://webhookrelay.com/blog/verify-webhook-signature/).

## [Replay and iterate](#replay-and-iterate)

This is where local development gets fast:

- **Replay from Webhook Relay** — past requests are stored on your bucket, so you can resend a captured event against your handler without touching Asana at all.
- **Iterate on your handler** by editing code and replaying the same delivery until it behaves correctly. No commits, no pushes, no deploys just to test a single code path.
- **Keep `relay forward` running** while you work — events stream straight to `localhost` as you trigger them in Asana.

Because the Webhook Relay endpoint is stable, you can stop and restart the agent, reboot your machine, or come back next week — the Asana configuration never needs to change.

## [Get started](#get-started)

1. Inspect the real payload in the free [Webhook Bin](https://webhookrelay.com/webhook-bin/) — no signup needed.
2. [Create a Webhook Relay account](https://my.webhookrelay.com/register), install the agent, and run `relay forward --bucket asana http://localhost:8080/webhook`.
3. Point your Asana webhook at the stable endpoint, trigger an event, and watch it hit `localhost`.

You will be testing real Asana events against your local handler in a few minutes — no deploys, no open firewall ports, and a URL you configure exactly once.

## **Frequently asked questions**

### **How do I test Asana webhooks locally?**

Asana can only POST to a public URL, so you bridge the public internet to your machine. Create a Webhook Relay bucket, paste its endpoint as the webhook URL in the Asana API (webhooks are created programmatically), then run the relay agent: 'relay forward --bucket asana http://localhost:8080/webhook'. The agent connects outbound, so there are no firewall ports to open and no public IP required.

### **Can I test a Asana webhook on localhost without deploying?**

Yes. Inspect the payload first in a free Webhook Bin to see exactly what Asana sends, then forward the same events to your local server with the relay agent. You develop and debug your handler entirely on localhost while Asana sends live events.

### **How does Asana sign its webhooks?**

Asana sends a one-time handshake with an X-Hook-Secret header that you echo back to confirm the endpoint. After that, each delivery is signed with an HMAC-SHA256 (hex) of the raw body using that secret, in the X-Hook-Signature header. Recompute and compare in constant time.