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Samarth Jajoo
Samarth Jajoo

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Whatsapp Bot API Build a WhatsApp Bot, fast ⚑

A few months ago, I'd started making chatbots on Telegram - I'd seen some APIs for WhatsApp but they were unoffical and there was a chance for getting your number blocked πŸ“± ❌

A while ago, I saw that Twilio had an official WhatsApp API. 30 minutes later, I made a Wikipedia bot on WhatsApp πŸ‘‡

This is a tutorial to help you make a something like this, your own chatbots on WhatsApp - these bots are immediately available to over 2 billion users, and there are so many things possible πŸŽ“

I can't wait to see what you make! Now, let's get started πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈ

πŸ”‘ Accounts and Keys

First, Sign up for Twilio - it's free and you won't need a credit card πŸ’³

Once you're done verifying your phone number, select Procuts > Programmable SMS and then continue to name your project.

Feel free to skip steps for adding teammates - you won't need that for now.

You must now take note of some authentication keys you'll need for building the WhatsApp bot πŸ‘‡

The final step - setup your WhatsApp Sandbox here - choose any number, and join your sandbox following instructions on the page.

Aaaaaand you're done with credential setup! Don't worry, that was the toughest part of this tutorial πŸ˜›

πŸš€ Getting Started

So that we don't spend too much time on setup, I've created an environment (with repl.it!) you can use within your browser. Head over here, and wait for a couple of seconds to fork it.

Next, create a .env file - and put in your Account SID and Auth Token, on lines 1 and 2



SID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX # Account SID
KEY=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX # Auth Token


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You can see, this environment already has dependencies installed, and an express server set up. We still need to give Twilio a URL to send incoming messages to, though πŸ”—

Let's go back to the WhatsApp Sandbox, and put in a webhook URL for incoming messages.

This URL must be what you see on the preview panel of your repl.it project + /incoming

We can now finally read messages that are sent to the bot. Navigate to index.js and then add a simple console.log() in your webhook handler πŸ‘‡



app.post('/incoming', (req, res) => {
  console.log(req.body)
});


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When you send a message to your bot, you should be able to see something like this in your repl console πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’»

Building an echo bot would look something like this, using twiml to write a message πŸ‘‡



app.post('/incoming', (req, res) => {
    const twiml = new MessagingResponse();
    twiml.message(req.body.Body);
    res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/xml'});
  res.end(twiml.toString());
});


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But, since we're actually trying to build a useful bot - let's use informative APIs!

🌐 Fetching Information

DuckDuckGo has an amazing, free instant answer API. It takes in a query and returns back a summary from WikiPedia and more.

A few examples πŸ‘‰ WikiPedia, Macbook Air, Twilio

I spent some time creating a decent parser which usually returns information from this API. Try pasting this code in your repl.it project, and your console should have stuff about Trump in it πŸ˜›



var base = 'https://api.duckduckgo.com/?skip_disambig=1&format=json&pretty=1&q=';
var query = 'Donald Trump';

request(base + query, function (error, response, body) {
    body = JSON.parse(body)    
    if(body["Abstract"] == ""){
        body["Abstract"]= body["RelatedTopics"][0]["Text"]
      }   
    var msg = body["Heading"]+"\n\n"+body["Abstract"];
  console.log(msg)
  });


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Pretty straight forward, right? πŸ˜„

πŸ› οΈ Putting it all together

To make our actual bot, all we need to do is get the query from our request - which we can get as req.body.Body - and use twmil to send across the data we collected in msg



app.post('/incoming', (req, res) => {
    const twiml = new MessagingResponse();
    var base = 'https://api.duckduckgo.com/?skip_disambig=1&format=json&pretty=1&q=';
    var query = req.body.Body;

    request(base + query, function (error, response, body) {
        body = JSON.parse(body)  

        if(body["Abstract"] == ""){
            body["Abstract"]= body["RelatedTopics"][0]["Text"]
          }   

        var msg = twiml.message(body["Heading"]+"\n\n"+body["Abstract"]);
            res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/xml'});
          res.end(twiml.toString());
      });

});


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You now have a fully functionaing WhatsApp bot! Send anything you want to know about your bot πŸ€– and you should see it respond super fast πŸ’¬ ⚑

Adding welcome messages and a little formatting is quite simple, look at the final repl to see how I did it πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’»

πŸ”— Sharing the bot

For others to use this bot, they'll need to join your sandbox first - and send a message just like you did earlier πŸ‘‰ join <two-words>

You can create links with this text too - For example this link lets you join my bot πŸ‘‡



https://wa.me/14155238886?text=join ultramarine-tapir


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14155238886 is my bot's number, while ultramarine-tapir is the sandbox phrase.

⚑ What's next?

Now that you know how to build a bot on WhatsApp, try sending notifications to yourself, and building more useful tools! Twilio has loads of other mediums to message through too!

All code for my WikiBot is on Github ⬇️

GitHub logo jajoosam / wikibot

A WikiPedia bot for WhatsApp

WhatsApp WikiBot

Powered by Twilio WhatsApp API and DuckDuckGo Instant Search API πŸ€–

\ γ‚œoγ‚œ)γƒŽ






I'm a 15 year old maker πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’» For more cool things to make and to stay updated with my progress, sign up for my newsletter πŸ“§

Top comments (20)

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Sweet second post Samarth!

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jajoosam profile image
Samarth Jajoo

πŸ™Œ More coming very soon!

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Heck yeah!

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bitsrfr profile image
Joseph

I wasn't familiar with Repl.it so it took me a minute to find .env. Just in case anyone else is wondering about that, here is Repl.it's guide.

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jajoosam profile image
Samarth Jajoo

Just added this in the tutorial - thanks for the suggestion :)

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dyanibergh profile image
Dyani Bergh

I am stuck. I need a whatsapp bot that blocks links from being posted on my group, except for links that is in an exception list. Can you help please. This is for users all over my country so I don't think they can join other platforms

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bitsrfr profile image
Joseph

Great tutorial! Well written, short and to the point.

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bauripalash profile image
Palash Bauri πŸ‘» • Edited

Aren't you growing?πŸ˜‰

BTW, amazing post! ❀

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lkreimann profile image
Lea Reimann πŸ¦„

Sooooo cool! Thanks for writing this post :)))

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maurycyszmurlo profile image
Maurycy Szmurlo

Nice post! I'll try ASAP.

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dipeshwalte profile image
dipeshwalte

Thanks a lot Samarth!! This will be really useful in my edtech project

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diek profile image
diek

Wow, i will really follow this guide soon, i have always wanted a whatsapp bot to make silly shits in group chats.

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kn_neeraj profile image
Neeraj Kumar

HI Samarth, great post!
However when I send some query, the bot doesn't reply anything.

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jajoosam profile image
Samarth Jajoo

Yeah - looks like my instance is down. The guide should still work tho!

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kn_neeraj profile image
Neeraj Kumar

Your chatbot still isn't working for me. Is there something I am missing?

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caballodeverdad profile image
CaballodeVerdad

It didn't work for me either, did you find a solution?

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