FB Messenger API - Receiving double requests - ruby

Question

I have a working FB Bot built with Ruby which allows players to play a scavenger hunt.
Sometimes though, when I have multiple players in a team, FB is sending me a players 'Answer' webhook twice. I have looked into it and at first thought it was to do with the 20 second timeout if FB gets no 200 OK response (Docs here). After checking the logs though, I am receiving the second webhook from FB only 14 seconds later. See below:
# Webhook #1
{"object"=>"page", "entry"=>[{"id"=>"252445748474312", "time"=>1532153642358, "messaging"=>[{"sender"=>{"id"=>"1709242109154907"}, "recipient"=>{"id"=>"252445748474312"}, "timestamp"=>1532153641935, "message"=>{"mid"=>"0FeOChulGjuPgg3YJqEgajNsY8kMfNRt_bpIdeegEeE54h-KB8szcd-EQ-UHUT3850RwHgH4TxVYFkoFwxqhtg", "seq"=>402953, "text"=>"Larrikins"}}]}]}
# Webhook #2 (14 seconds later)
{"object"=>"page", "entry"=>[{"id"=>"252445748474312", "time"=>1532153656901, "messaging"=>[{"sender"=>{"id"=>"1709242109154907"}, "recipient"=>{"id"=>"252445748474312"}, "timestamp"=>1532153641935, "message"=>{"mid"=>"0FeOChulGjuPgg3YJqEgajNsY8kMfNRt_bpIdeegEeE54h-KB8szcd-EQ-UHUT3850RwHgH4TxVYFkoFwxqhtg", "seq"=>402953, "text"=>"Larrikins"}}]}]}
Notice both are exactly the same apart from the first "time" attribute (14 secs later).
Due to a number of methods and calls that I process after receiving the first webhook, the 200 OK response is only being sent back to FB once I have finished sending my messages in response (hence the 14 second delay).
So I have two questions:
Is the 14 second delay too long and that is why FB is resending? If so, how can I send a 200OK response straight away (head :ok)?
Is it another issue entirely?

Answer 1

You also ensure that "Echo" is disabled.
Go to Settings>Webhooks, edit events.
Asyncronous language like NodeJS is recomended, in my case y work with AWS SQS, I have workers that process the requests witout blocking (dont wait), I return 200,"ok" to FB to avoid that FB send again the message to my webhook.
Anothe apporach maybe store the mid in database, and check in each request if the mid exists, if exists the dont process the message. I was use Dynamo DB (AWS) with TTL enabled, thus with TTL my database autoclean every hour erasing old request.

Answer 2

I think it is the 15 second wait before replying, was also happening to me as Facebook auto retries when you don't reply fast enough. Te EEe Te's idea is solid, write some mechanism to cache mids and check if it is a duplicate before processing