How do I receive Github Webhooks in Python

First thing is, web is request-response based. So something will request your link, and you will respond accordingly. Your server application will be continuously listening on a port; that you don't have to worry about.

Here is the similar version in Flask (my micro framework of choice):

from flask import Flask, request
import json

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/',methods=['POST'])
def foo():
   data = json.loads(request.data)
   print "New commit by: {}".format(data['commits'][0]['author']['name'])
   return "OK"

if __name__ == '__main__':
   app.run()

Here is a sample run, using the example from github:

Running the server (the above code is saved in sample.py):

burhan@lenux:~$ python sample.py 
 * Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/

Here is a request to the server, basically what github will do:

burhan@lenux:~$ http POST http://127.0.0.1:5000 < sample.json
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-Length: 2
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2013 19:07:56 GMT
Server: Werkzeug/0.8.3 Python/2.7.3

OK # <-- this is the response the client gets

Here is the output at the server:

New commit by: Chris Wanstrath
127.0.0.1 - - [27/Jan/2013 22:07:56] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 -

Here's a basic web.py example for receiving data via POST and doing something with it (in this case, just printing it to stdout):

import web

urls = ('/.*', 'hooks')

app = web.application(urls, globals())

class hooks:
    def POST(self):
        data = web.data()
        print
        print 'DATA RECEIVED:'
        print data
        print
        return 'OK'

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

I POSTed some data to it using hurl.it (after forwarding 8080 on my router), and saw the following output:

$ python hooks.py 
http://0.0.0.0:8080/

DATA RECEIVED: 
test=thisisatest&test2=25

50.19.170.198:33407 - - [27/Jan/2013 10:18:37] "HTTP/1.1 POST /hooks" - 200 OK

You should be able to swap out the print statements for your JSON processing.

To specify the port number, call the script with an extra argument:

$ python hooks.py 1234 

If you are using Flask, here's a very minimal code to listen for webhooks:

from flask import Flask, request, Response

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/webhook', methods=['POST'])
def respond():
    print(request.json) # Handle webhook request here
    return Response(status=200)

And the same example using Django:

from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.views.decorators.http import require_POST

@require_POST
def example(request):
    print(request.json) # Handle webhook request here
    return HttpResponse('Hello, world. This is the webhook response.')

If you need more information, here's a great tutorial on how to listen for webhooks with Python.

I would use:

https://github.com/carlos-jenkins/python-github-webhooks

You can configure a web server to use it, or if you just need a process running there without a web server you can launch the integrated server:

python webhooks.py

This will allow you to do everything you said you need. It, nevertheless, requires a bit of setup in your repository and in your hooks.

Late to the party and shameless autopromotion, sorry.