Demo Bot for api https://chat-api.com/en/swagger.html
- The output of the command list
- The output of the current chat ID
- The output of the actual server time of the bot running on
- The output of your name
- Sending files of different formats (PDF, jpg, doc, mp3, etc.)
- Sending of prerecorded voice messages
- Sending of geo-coordinates (locations)
- Setting up a conference (group)
Attention: To make the bot fully functional, please, always keep your phone online. Your phone should not be used for the WhatsApp Web at the same time.
At first, let's link up the WhatsApp with our script at once so that we can check the way code works while we're writing one. To do so, we will switch to our account and get a QR code there. Then we open WhatsApp on your mobile phone, go to Settings → WhatsApp Web → Scan the QR code.
At this point, the WebHook URL must be provided for the server to trigger our script for incoming messages. The WebHook URL is a link to which JSON-data containing information about incoming messages or notifications will be sent using the POST method. So we need a server to make the bot run and this server will accept and process this information. While writing this article, we deployed the server using the FLASK microframework. The FLASK server allows us to conveniently respond to incoming requests and process them.
pip install flask
Then clone the repository for yourself. Then go to the wabot.py file and change the APIUrl and token variables to yours from your personal cabinet https://app.chat-api.com/instance/
Class constructor, the default one that will accept JSON, which will contain information about incoming messages (it will be received by WebHook and forwarded to the class). To see how the received JSON will look like, you can enter the easy-to-use Testing section, available in your cabinet. You can also test WebHook requests in it. https://app.chat-api.com/testing
You can view the JSON structure in the testing section of the “Check WebHook” item. It is required to run the check and send messages to your WhatsApp chat. You will see the JSON sent to the WebHook on the display.
Copy this JSON and run our local FLASK server with the help of a debugger in the code editor or through the
flask run
In order to emulate the request to the server, we need to send a POST request from JSON, which we copied in the previous step. The request is sent to your localhost address where flask is running. Thus, we can emulate the WebHook actions and test the bot functionality.
Used to send requests to the site API
def send_requests(self, method, data):
url = f"{self.APIUrl}{method}?token={self.token}"
headers = {'Content-type': 'application/json'}
answer = requests.post(url, data=json.dumps(data), headers=headers)
return answer.json()- method determines the Chat API method be called.
- data contains the data required for sending.
Used to send messages to WhatsApp chat
def send_message(self, chatID, text):
data = {"chatID" : chatID,
"body" : text}
answer = self.send_requests('sendMessage', data)
return answer- ChatID – ID of the chat where the message should be sent
- Text – Text of the message
Serves to answer the command "chatId". Sends user id to the chat
def show_chat_id(self,chatID):
return self.send_message(chatID, f"Chat ID : {chatID}")- ChatID – ID of the chat where the message should be sent
Serves to answer the "time" command. Sends the current server time to the chat.
def time(self, chatID):
t = datetime.datetime.now()
time = t.strftime('%d:%m:%Y')
return self.send_message(chatID, time)- ChatID – ID of the chat where the message should be sent
Serves to answer the command "file". Sends to the chat file, which lies on the server in the specified format
def file(self, chatID, format):
availableFiles = {'doc' : 'document.doc',
'gif' : 'gifka.gif',
'jpg' : 'jpgfile.jpg',
'png' : 'pngfile.png',
'pdf' : 'presentation.pdf',
'mp4' : 'video.mp4',
'mp3' : 'mp3file.mp3'}
if format in availableFiles.keys():
data = {
'chatId' : chatID,
'body': f'https://domain.com/Python/{availableFiles[format]}',
'filename' : availableFiles[format],
'caption' : f'Get your file {availableFiles[format]}'
}
return self.send_requests('sendFile', data)- chatID – ID of the chat where the message should be sent
- format – is the format of the file to be sent. All files to be sent are stored on the server-side.
What's a data
- ChatID – ID of the chat where the message should be sent
- Body – direct link to the file to be sent
- Filename – the name of the file
- Caption – the text to be sent out together with the file
Generate request with the send_requests and the “sendFile” as a parameter; submit our data to it.
Used to send a voice message to a chat room.
def ptt(self, chatID):
data = {
"audio" : 'https://domain.com/Python/ptt.ogg',
"chatId" : chatID }
return self.send_requests('sendAudio', data)- ChatID – ID of the chat where the message should be sent
What's a data
- “audio” – a direct link to a file in ogg format
- "chatID" – ID of the chat where the message should be sent
Generate request with the send_requests and the “sendAudio” as a parameter; submit our data to it.
Used to send geolocation to a chat room def geo(self, chatID):
data = {
"lat" : '51.51916',
"lng" : '-0.139214',
"address" :'Your address',
"chatId" : chatID
}
answer = self.send_requests('sendLocation', data)
return answer- ChatID – ID of the chat where the message should be sent
What's a data
- "сhatID" – ID of the chat where the message should be sent
- “lat” – predefined coordinates
- “lng” – predefined coordinates
- “address” – this is your address or any string you need.
Generate request with the send_requests and the “sendLocation” as a parameter; submit our data to it.
Used to create a group of bot and user
def group(self, author):
phone = author.replace('@c.us', '')
data = {
"groupName" : 'Group with the bot Python',
"phones" : phone,
"messageText" : 'It is your group. Enjoy'
}
answer = self.send_requests('group', data)
return answer- author – the JSON body sent by the WebHook with information on the message sender.
What's a data
- “groupName” – the conference name when created
- “phones” – all the necessary participants' phone numbers; you can also send an array of several phone numbers
- “messageText” – The first message in the conference
Generate request with the send_requests and the “group” as a parameter; submit our data to it.
def processing(self):
if self.dict_messages != []:
for message in self.dict_messages:
text = message['body'].split()
if not message['fromMe']:
id = message['chatId']
if text[0].lower() == 'hi':
return self.welcome(id)
elif text[0].lower() == 'time':
return self.time(id)
elif text[0].lower() == 'chatid':
return self.show_chat_id(id)
elif text[0].lower() == 'me':
return self.me(id, message['senderName'])
elif text[0].lower() == 'file':
return self.file(id, text[1])
elif text[0].lower() == 'ptt':
return self.ptt(id)
elif text[0].lower() == 'geo':
return self.geo(id)
elif text[0].lower() == 'group':
return self.group(message['author'])
else:
return self.welcome(id, True)
else: return 'NoCommand'Now we need to arrange the bot's logic so it can react to commands and interact with the user as well. We will call this function for each time we receive data in our WebHook
Do you remember the attribute of our bot dict_messages we created at the beginning? It has dictionaries of messages that we have accepted. The test filters out data not containing any messages. WebHook can receive a request with no message.
if self.dict_messages != []:We may receive several messages in a single request, and our bot must process them all. To do this, we are going through all the dictionaries which have a dict_messages list.
for message in self.dict_messages:
text = message['body'].split()We declare a variable text — which will be a list of words contained in our message — after entering the loop. To do this, we turn to the message dictionary using the ['body'] key to get the text of the incoming message and just call the split() function, which allows us to split the text into words.
We then check if the incoming message is not coming from ourselves by referring to the 'fromMe' key which contains True or False values and validates who the message was from. If this test is not performed, the bot may become an infinite recursion.
if not message['fromMe']:We now get the chat id from the same message dictionary using the ['ChatID'] key. We address the first element of the word list, put it in the lower case so that the bot could react to messages written by UPPERCASE or MiXeD cAsE and then compare it with the commands we need. Next, just parse which command came and call the corresponding functions
if text[0].lower() == 'hi':
return self.welcome(id)
elif text[0].lower() == 'time':
return self.time(id)
elif text[0].lower() == 'chatid':
return self.show_chat_id(id)
elif text[0].lower() == 'me':
return self.me(id, message['senderName'])
elif text[0].lower() == 'file':
return self.file(id, text[1])
elif text[0].lower() == 'ptt':
return self.ptt(id)
elif text[0].lower() == 'geo':
return self.geo(id)
elif text[0].lower() == 'group':
return self.group(message['author'])
else:
return self.welcome(id, True)
else: return 'NoCommand'To process incoming requests to our server we use this function
@app.route('/', methods=['POST'])
def home():
if request.method == 'POST':
bot = WABot(request.json)
return bot.processing()We'll write the path app.route('/', methods = ['POST']) for it. This decorator means that our home function will be called every time our FLASK server is accessed through a post request by the main path.
We are testing the fact that the server was accessed through the POST method. Now we create an instance of our bot and submit JSON data to it. So now we just call the bot.processing() method that handles requests from our object.