PubNub Events & Actions

When to Use This Skill

• Integrating PubNub with AWS (Lambda via webhook/SQS, Kinesis, S3, EventBridge via webhook)
• Streaming PubNub events into Kafka or AMQP
• Mirroring PubNub messages to a data warehouse via S3 batching
• Triggering external workflows on PubNub events (presence, App Context, files)
• Setting up no-code routing without using PubNub Functions
• Configuring webhook retries, payload envelopes, batching

Core Workflow

1. Pick the event source (Messages / Users / Channels / Push / Memberships).
2. Pick the event type within that source.
3. Add a filter if needed (no filter / basic / JSONPath).
4. Create the action target (webhook URL, SQS queue, Kafka topic, etc.) with credentials.
5. Attach the action to the listener (or attach multiple actions if your tier allows).
6. Pick envelope version + batching if applicable.
7. Test in staging with synthetic events; verify retry behavior.

Reference Guide

• references/event-types.md — full event taxonomy: Messages, Users, Channels, Push, Memberships
• references/action-targets.md — Webhook, SQS, Kinesis, S3, Kafka, IFTTT, AMQP target details and quirks
• references/filters-and-jsonpath.md — basic filters, advanced JSONPath syntax, examples
• references/retries-and-batching.md — retry policy, envelope versions, batching for S3/webhook

Key Implementation Requirements

Plan Tier Affects Capabilities

Listener / Action Decoupling

Internal Presence Channels Are Excluded

-pnpres

Webhook Payload Has a Versioned Schema

schema

pubnub.com/schemas/events/presence.user.channel.joined?v=1.0.0

schema

Versioned Envelope (1.0, 2.0, 2.1)

Constraints

• Free tier has no retry — every transient downstream failure is a permanent loss. Upgrade for production.
• Action target endpoints must be reachable from PubNub's egress. For Lambda behind API Gateway, ensure no auth blocks the webhook.
• Webhook 2xx = no retry; other statuses retry per policy. 301s follow up to 3 redirects.
• Batching for S3 and Webhook — batch by item count or time, whichever first; S3 batches > 5MB use multipart upload.
• Internal presence (

  -pnpres

  ) is excluded — use the Presence-source listeners instead.
• Listener changes apply on save, but events already in flight may use the previous configuration briefly.
• JSONPath filters are evaluated server-side before the action — wrong syntax silently drops events.

MCP Tools

• send_pubnub_message

  — generate test events

• subscribe_and_receive_pubnub_messages

  — confirm publish path before E&A delivery

• get_pubnub_messages

  — confirm events landed in history

See Also

• pubnub-functions — when you need to modify messages in flight (E&A only routes); see

  before publish

  /

  after publish

  /

  on request

• pubnub-illuminate — when you need threshold-triggered actions on aggregated metrics (E&A is per-event); compare

  WEBHOOK_EXECUTION

  action type in Decisions
• pubnub-app-context — Users / Channels / Memberships event sources are CRUD events on App Context objects
• pubnub-presence — Channels event source includes presence events (join, leave, timeout, interval)
• pubnub-keyset-management — E&A is configured per keyset; environment separation matters
• pubnub-observability — for end-to-end correlation of PubNub event → downstream system
• pubnub-choose-docs-path — for routing other PubNub questions

Output Format

1. State the listener event source + event type up front.
2. State which action types are available on the user's tier.
3. For webhooks, recommend an idempotent receiver (events can retry → duplicates).
4. Include

   schema

   field handling in any webhook receiver code example.
5. Note batching configuration for S3 and high-volume webhooks.
6. Recommend environment-separated E&A configuration (dev → dev keyset).