WhatsApp REST Webservice

A Python/Django REST webservice using Yowsup to send messages to WhatsApp. WIP.

Getting started

Setting up the environment

Get the source.

git clone https://github.com/svub/whatsapp-rest-webservice.git
cd whatsapp-rest-webservice

Make sure you have Python env installed. Then, open the virtual environment.

pip install virtualenv
virtualenv --no-site-packages --distribute env && source env/bin/activate

Install the dependencies.

pip install django djangorestframework coreapi

Initialize Django by creating an empty database and a superuser to secure the REST webservices.

python manage.py migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser

When running createsuperuser, you'll have to choose which username and password you want to set to secure the service. It's required as otherwise anybody could send messages on your behalf.

Initialize Yowsup You'll see a lot of console output running the following command - also warnings - and it'll take a while. But everything is good if it ends with "Finished processing dependencies for yowsup2==2.5.2".

cd service/yowsup/ && python setup.py install && cd ../../

Setting up your WhatsApp account

You'll need a registered WhatsApp account and a working mobile phone number to do the setup.

1. Register your phone

yowsup-cli registration --cc <country code> --phone <country code><phone no> --mcc <MCC code> --requestcode sms

• Country code without "+" or "00", e.g. for Germany it's "49"
• Example phone number with German country code: 4917616702776
• The MCC is an ID of your provider, you can find a List of MMCs on Wikipedia, for Germany, it's O2 26203, Telekom 26201, and Vodafone 26202

2. Activiate your phone.

After sending out the registration request, you should have received an SMS with a code that you'll need now.

yowsup-cli registration --cc <country code> --phone <country code><phone no> --mcc <MCC code> --register <code received via SMS>

This will print you a result similar to this:

status: ok
kind: free
pw: +BaimGldHiWhr0oseHxbSScF3vT=
price: 0,89 €
price_expiration: 1501987180
currency: EUR
cost: 0.89
expiration: 4444444444.0
login: 4910716702776
type: existing

We'll need the password from the third line (starting with "pw:") - in this example "+BaimGldHiWhr0oseHxbSScF3vT=".

Configuring the service

Customize your config file, and insert your full phone number (again with CC) and the password from the previous step.

cp service/whatsapp.example.conf service/whatsapp.conf && nano service/whatsapp.conf

Running the service

Testing the service locally - available for localhost only on port 8000.

python manage.py runserver

Run the service publically - you'll need sudo to run a service on port 80 - or use a port like 8000 to run it without sudo.

sudo python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:80

And you need to add all URLs and IPs to the list "ALLOWED_HOSTS" in "service/settings.py", e.g.

ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['192.168.1.111', 'whatsapp-api.domain.com']

Once the service runs, visit the URL you specified, e.g. localhost:8000 and login (link in upper right corner) to send messages. Select "Api root" in the upper left and then click the link in the middle with "messages" in the end. You can send messages using the auto-generated form. All the messages sent will be listed above. Only "target" and "body" are required. "Target" is the phone number you want to send your message to (again with country code but without "00" or "+") and "body" is the text you want to send.

Run on startup.

To make it a proper service, edit "whatsapp-service" and change "DIR=" in line 14 to the location of your installation. If you're running Debian, copy this file to "/etc/init.d/". And run following commands to first register the service and also run it right away. Next time your system restarts, the service should be running by default.

sudo update-rc.d whatsapp-service defaults
sudo /etc/init.d/whatsapp-service start

To stop it, run

sudo /etc/init.d/whatsapp-service stop

See how it's doing with

sudo /etc/init.d/whatsapp-service status

On Ubuntu, use upstart to setup the service.