Whatsapp Cloud API

Unofficial Javascript wrapper to WhatsApp Cloud API. It was first ported from heyoo but now I will be maintaining it and adding more features.

Features supported

✅ Sending messages ✅ Sending Media (images, audio, video and documents) ✅ Sending location ✅ Sending interactive buttons ✅ Sending template messages ✅ Get templates

Getting started

To get started with whatsapp-cloud-api, you have to firstly install the libary either directly or using npm.

Installing from npm

# For Windows, Linux & Mac

npm install @phoscoder/whatsapp-cloud-api

Setting up

To get started using this package, you will need **Access Token**, **Phone Number ID** and **Whatsapp Business Account ID** which you can get by from Facebook Developer Portal

Here are steps to follow for you to get started

1. Go to your apps
2. create an app
3. Select Bussiness >> Bussiness
4. It will prompt you to enter basic app informations
5. It will ask you to add products to your app a. Add WhatsApp Messenger
6. Right there you will see a your Access Token, Whatsapp Business Account ID and Phone Number ID and its phone_number_id
7. Lastly verify the number you will be using for testing on the To field.

Once you're follow the above procedures, now you're ready to start hacking with the Wrapper.

Authentication

Here how you authenticate your application, you need to specify two things the <access token>, <phone number id> and <whatsapp business account id> of your test number

import {WhatsApp} from '@phoscoder/whatsapp-cloud-api'
let messenger = new WhatsApp(
    '<access token>',  
    '<phone number id>',
    '<whatsapp business account id>'
)

Once you have authenticated your app, now you can start using the above mentioned feature as shown above;

Sending Messanges

Here how to send messages;

messenger.sendMessage('Your message ', 'Mobile eg: 263757xxxxx')

Example

Here an example

messenger.sendMessage('Hi there just testiing', '263757902132')

Sending Images

When sending media(image, video, audio, gif and document ), you can either specify a link containing the media or specify object id, you can do this using the same method.

By default all media methods assume you're sending link containing media but you can change this by specifying the link=False.

Here an example;

messenger.sendImage(
        "https://i.imgur.com/Fh7XVYY.jpeg",
        "263757xxxxxx",
)

Sending Video

Here an example;

messenger.sendVideo(
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4TOrB7at0Y",
        "263757xxxxxx",
)

Sending Audio

Here an example;

messenger.sendAudio(
        "https://www.soundhelix.com/examples/mp3/SoundHelix-Song-1.mp3",
        "263757xxxxxx",
)

Sending Document

Here an example;

messenger.sendDocument(
        "http://www.africau.edu/images/default/sample.pdf",
        "263757xxxxxx",      // Recipient ID
        "sample.pdf",        // File Name
        "Sample Document"    // Caption
)

Sending Location

Here an example;

messenger.sendLocation(
        1.29,            // Latitude
        103.85,          // Longitude
        "Singapore",     // Name
        "Singapore",     // Address
        "263757xxxxxx",  // Recipient ID
    )

Sending Interactive buttons

Here an example;

const button = {
    "header": "Header Testing",
    "body": "Body Testing",
    "footer": "Footer Testing",
    "action": {
        "button": "Button Testing",
        "sections": [
            {
                "title": "iBank",
                "rows": [
                    {"id": "row 1", "title": "Send Money", "description": ""},
                    {
                        "id": "row 2",
                        "title": "Withdraw money",
                        "description": "",
                    },
                ],
            }
        ],
    },
}

messenger.sendButton(
        button,
        "263757xxxxxx"
)

Sending a Template Messages

Here how to send a pre-approved template message;

messenger.sendTemplate("hello_world", "263757xxxxxx")

Sending a Template Messages with Components

You can now specify components like this

let components = [ 
  // Your components here
]

messenger.sendTemplate("hello_world", "263757xxxxxx", components)

For moreabout components: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/cloud-api/guides/send-message-templates

Webhook

Webhooks are useful incase you're wondering how to respond to incoming message send by user, but I have created a starter webhook which you can then customize it according to your own plans.

To learn more about webhook and how to configure in your Facebook developer dashboard please have a look here.

Notification Payload Structure

This is the structure of the notifications that you will recieve from Whatsapp when a certain event is triggered

{
  "object": "whatsapp_business_account",
  "entry": [{
    "id": "WHATSAPP-BUSINESS-ACCOUNT-ID",
    "changes": [{
      "value": {
         "messaging_product": "whatsapp",
         "metadata": {
           "display_phone_number": "PHONE-NUMBER",
           "phone_number_id": "PHONE-NUMBER-ID"
         },
      # Additional arrays and objects
         "contacts": [{...}]
         "errors": [{...}]
         "messages": [{...}]
         "statuses": [{...}]
      },
      "field": "messages"
    }]
  }]
}

Recieving notifications (Method #1 > Inbuilt server)

To receive notifications such as customer messages, alerts and other callbacks from WhatsApp you can start a server that listens and handles notifications from Whatsapp

import { Server } from '@phoscoder/whatsapp-cloud-api'
import 'dotenv/config'

let notificationsServer = new Server(
    process.env.VERIFY_TOKEN,
    process.env.LISTEN_PORT,
)

let app = notificationsServer.start(async (rawData ,processedPayload) => {
  // Do your stuff here
  
  if (processedPayload.type == "messages") {
    let messages = processedPayload.getMessages()
    let metadata = processedPayload.getMetadata()
    let contacts = processedPayload.getContacts()
  
  if (processedPayload.type == "contacts") {
    let contacts = processedPayload.getContacts()
  
  if (processedPayload.type == "status") {
    let status = processedPayload.getStatuses()

  // Do other stuff here
})

rawData -> This is raw data straight from WhatsApp processedPayload -> This is an object of ProcessPayload it gives access to the raw_data plus helper methods

[!NOTE] Beginners should work more with processed since it saves you time and minimizes errors

Tip: You can refactor it to look more presentable:

import handleNotifications from 'path/to/file'

let app = notificationServer.start(handleNotifications)

Recieving notifications (Method #2 > Existing server)

To receive notifications such as customer messages, alerts and other callbacks from WhatsApp on an existing server, take the following steps

import { 
  Server, 
  NotificationPayload, 
  ProcessPayload, 
  VerifyWebhookToken } from '@phoscoder/whatsapp-cloud-api'

import dotenv from 'dotenv'
dotenv.config()

const VERIFY_TOKEN = process.env.VERIFY_TOKEN

 // For webhook verification
 app.get("/", async (req: Request, res:Response) => {      
      const server = new Server(VERIFY_TOKEN)
      let res = server.verifyWebhookToken(req.query as Record<string, any>)
      res.send(res)
  })

  // For incoming notifications
  app.post("/", async (req: Request, res:Response) => {
      let data: NotificationPayload = req.body
  
      let processedPayload = new ProcessPayload(data)
      
      // Do your stuff here
      if (processedPayload.type == "messages") {
        let messages = processedPayload.getMessages()
        let metadata = processedPayload.getMetadata()
        let contacts = processedPayload.getContacts()
      
      if (processedPayload.type == "contacts") {
        let contacts = processedPayload.getContacts()
      
      if (processedPayload.type == "status") {
        let status = processedPayload.getStatuses()

      return res.json("Notification recieved!")
  })

Getting media links

To retrive actual media link

let message = processedPayload.getMessages()[0]
let mediaData = await messenger.getMedia(message.image.id)

[!NOTE] The URL you get is only available for a 5 minutes, so you may need to download it and store it somewhere, or use it as quick as possible

For more info check Notification Payload Reference and Notification Payload Examples

Debugging

In cases where you want to see the full response and all its data set debug to true like this

import { WhatsApp } from '@phoscoder/whatsapp_cloud_api'
...
...
...
const client = new WhatsApp("<token>", "<phone_number_id>", true)

OR this

client.debug = true 

Issues

If you will face any issue with the usage of this package please raise one so as we can quickly fix it as soon as possible;

Contributing

This is an opensource project under MIT License so any one is welcome to contribute from typo, to source code to documentation, JUST FORK IT.

All the credit

1. kalebu
2. takunda
3. Contribute to get added here