Land registry filing webhooks

Create a daily or weekly watch and receive a signed webhook (HMAC-SHA256) when a filing is added to a lot's index.

The Registre foncier has no push feed. A Fonciq watch is therefore a scheduled re-check of a lot, compared with a reference snapshot taken when the watch is created. When a difference appears, Fonciq calls your URL with a signed webhook. An empty difference sends nothing.

This page is a guide. The complete reference is Surveillances et webhooks (French).

1. Create the watch

POST /v1/watches (scope watches:write) requires an Idempotency-Key header.

curl -X POST https://api.fonciq.ca/v1/watches \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FONCIQ_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: 5d0b7c3a-2e1f-4b6a-8c9d-1a2b3c4d5e6f" \
  -d '{"lot":"1234567","cadence":"daily","url":"https://exemple.com/hooks/fonciq"}'

cadence is weekly (the default) or daily. There is no monthly cadence. Without account_id, the watch is placed on the default Registre account; it uses that account's daily index capacity (cap of 540 indexes per day, 180 of them reserved for on-demand calls). An organisation can have 25 active watches (409 with watch_cap_reached beyond that).

Creating the watch costs CAD 0.99 excluding Registre fees. Each index re-checked afterwards is a separate call: CAD 0.99 excluding Registre fees, plus the CAD 1.50 Registre fee charged to the account holder.

Pausing, deleting, history and manual resend are done in Studio › Développeurs: they are not public routes.

2. Event types

`type`	When
`index.inscription_added`	A registration number absent from the reference snapshot appears.
`acte.added`	The PDF of that filing's deed is obtained.
`cadastre.changed`	The lot number, the cadastre label or the geometric identity changed.
`assessment.changed`	The MAMH roll year or the assessed amount changed.

Body of an index.inscription_added notice:

{
  "id": "evt_01HZX",
  "type": "index.inscription_added",
  "account_id": "rfa_exemple",
  "lot": "1234567",
  "change": "Inscription 21 014 436",
  "old": { "inscriptions": [] },
  "new": { "inscriptions": ["21 014 436"] },
  "document_url": "https://api.fonciq.ca/v1/documents/42"
}

document_url is the index PDF, the authoritative record. Structured rows are read with GET /v1/documents/{id}/entries.

3. Verify the signature

Each notice carries the header Fonciq-Signature: t=<unix>,v1=<hex>. v1 is the HMAC-SHA256 of {t}.{raw body}, signed with the endpoint secret, shown once. Reject a t more than five minutes from your clock, and compare the raw body, before any JSON rewriting.

Node

import { createHmac, timingSafeEqual } from 'node:crypto';

export function verify(rawBody, header, secret) {
  const parts = Object.fromEntries(header.split(',').map((p) => p.split('=')));
  const age = Math.abs(Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000) - Number(parts.t));
  if (!parts.t || !parts.v1 || age > 300) return false;
  const expected = createHmac('sha256', secret).update(`${parts.t}.${rawBody}`).digest('hex');
  const a = Buffer.from(expected);
  const b = Buffer.from(parts.v1);
  return a.length === b.length && timingSafeEqual(a, b);
}

Python

import hashlib, hmac, time

def verify(raw_body: bytes, header: str, secret: str) -> bool:
    parts = dict(item.split("=", 1) for item in header.split(","))
    if "t" not in parts or "v1" not in parts or abs(time.time() - int(parts["t"])) > 300:
        return False
    signed = parts["t"].encode() + b"." + raw_body
    expected = hmac.new(secret.encode(), signed, hashlib.sha256).hexdigest()
    return hmac.compare_digest(expected, parts["v1"])

4. Respond, and retries

Answer 2xx quickly. A notice that fails is retried: immediate delivery, then about 24 h, 48 h and 72 h later. The notice then moves to failed. A manual resend from the dashboard is a new attempt.

Be told about a new filing on a lot