realtime-events

Publish a Realtime event

Publishes an event to one or more channels of a Realtime app. Listing several channels broadcasts the event to all of them in one call. Connected clients subscribed to those channels receive it in real time.

post/v1/realtime/apps/{realtime_app_id}/events

Request

  • Base URL: https://us1.platform.bird.com
  • URL: https://us1.platform.bird.com/v1/realtime/apps/{realtime_app_id}/events
  • Auth: one of:
    • HTTP bearer and API key in header X-Realtime-Key and API key in header X-Realtime-Secret
    • API key in cookie bird_session and API key in header X-Realtime-Key and API key in header X-Realtime-Secret

Headers

Idempotency-Keystring

Client-supplied key. On operations supporting request deduplication, a retained response is replayed for duplicate requests with the same key within the idempotency window (3 hours by default). This protection requires a workspace, organization, or staff-account scope. User-only and unscoped unauthenticated operations, streams, and operations with a separate replay contract do not use this response replay.

On a supported operation, if idempotency protection is unavailable before execution, the API returns 503 IdempotencyUnavailable (E01033) without executing this attempt. Retry with backoff using the same key and request. An operation that takes effect before its response is retained can still execute again on retry.

Two distinct 409 errors signal misuse:

  • request_in_progress (E01004): The same key is currently being processed by a concurrent request. Wait briefly and retry. The lock expires within 30 seconds.
  • idempotency_key_reuse (E01005): The same key has already completed against a different request body or method. Generate a new key.

Recommended key format is <event-type>/<entity-id> (for example welcome-user/usr_abc123).

X-Workspace-Idstring

Workspace context for the request. Required for dashboard authentication and master keys. Workspace keys and access tokens already identify their workspace; send that workspace or omit the header. A different one is rejected.

X-Organization-Idstring

Organization context for the request. Required for dashboard authentication. An API key or access token carries its own organization, so send either that organization or no header at all; a different one is rejected.

Request body

eventstring required

The event name clients bind to. Application event names are free-form; the bird: and bird_internal: prefixes are reserved for the protocol and rejected.

channelsRealtimeChannelName[] required

The channels to deliver the event to (up to 100 per call). Prefix with private- or presence- for authenticated channels. A private-encrypted- channel must be the only channel in its publish: each encrypted channel has its own key, so a fan-out would hand the other channels unreadable ciphertext.

dataunknown
exclude_connection_idstring

Exclude this connection from delivery, to avoid echoing a change back to the client that triggered it. The value is the client's connection id, assigned when its connection is established.

includeRealtimeChannelInclude[]

Per-channel attributes to return alongside the publish, reflecting each channel's state at publish time. member_count is available only for presence channels. connection_count requires the app's connection-counting flag. Requesting attributes counts as one additional message toward usage.

Example request

{
  "event": "order-updated",
  "channels": [
    "orders",
    "orders-42"
  ],
  "exclude_connection_id": "123.4567"
}

Response

The event was accepted for delivery.

Example response

{
  "data": [
    {
      "name": "orders-42"
    }
  ]
}

Changes

No recorded changes to this operation across all 2 revisions of this API.