botsapp

A WhatsApp bot framework in Node

Botsapp is simple framework for creating WhatsApp bots (using the awesome whatsapi project).

whatapi

As of May 2015 the whatsapi library which is a dependecy of botsapp has been removed due to legal threats.. I belive there are other forks possibly still available. I'm no longer actively using this library, but I'm happy to accept pull requests for anyone who wishes to test one of these libraries and change the dependency.

Disclaimer

I know. I'm sorry. I really hope this doesn't end up powering lots of annoying WhatsApp bots, but I needed this for a personal project.

Be warned that there are plenty of reports of people getting their number banned from WhatsApp when using anything other than the official clients. Using this code may result in your account being banned. The bot will attempt to follow the protocol as closely as possible to avoid that, but this is based on annecdotal evidence rather than watching network traffic (as that is against the WhatsApp terms and conditions).

Install

npm install --save botsapp

Usage

'use strict';

var Botsapp = require('botsapp');
var process = require('process');

var yourBot = new Botsapp.Bot({
  adapter: {
    msisdn: '123456789', // phone number with country code
    username: 'YourBot', // your name on WhatsApp
    password: 'asdfghjkl', // WhatsApp password
    ccode: '44' // country code
  }
});

// Register a handler which logs every message
var anyMessage = new Botsapp.Trigger().always();
yourBot.registerTrigger(anyMessage, function onTrigger(event) {
  console.log(event);
});

// Get a thumbsup, give a thumbsup
var thumbsupEmoji = new Buffer([240, 159, 145, 141]);
var thumbsUp = new Botsapp.Trigger().withEmoji(thumbsupEmoji);

yourBot.registerTrigger(thumbsUp, function onTrigger(event) {
  var emoji = thumbsupEmoji.toString('utf8');

  yourBot.sendMessage(event.from, emoji, function onSend() {
    console.log('Sent emoji to', event.from);
  });
});

// Get hello from a specific user
var author = '[email protected]';
var helloFromMe = new Botsapp.Trigger()
  .from(author)
  .withText('hello');

yourBot.registerTrigger(helloFromMe, function onTrigger(event) {
  console.log('Got hello from', author, event.body);
});

// Connect to the server
yourBot.connect(function() {
  console.log("I'm alive!");
});

yourBot.on('error', function gracefulShutdown() {
  yourBot.destroy();
  process.exit(1);
});

API

There are a few exports:

• Bot
• Trigger
• Dispatcher
• DrainDisptacher

Bot

Make an instance of Bot to establish a connection. The bot provides methods to register actions and to interact with WhatsApp. Currently, only sending a message (to a user or group) is supported.

Trigger

Triggers are sets of conditions which trigger functions when all (default) or any of those conditions are met. Triggers can be arbitrarily constructed with a chain.

Matching any conditions:

var someWords = new Trigger({
 mode: 'any',
}).withText('foo').withText('bar')

Matching all conditions:

var helloInGroup = new Trigger()
 .withText('hello')
 .inGroup()

Dispatcher (+ DrainDispatcher)

The Dispatcher is used to dispatch events from WhatsApp, check if they match triggers and invoke actions. By default the Dispatcher class will dispatch every event from the server to the triggers.

When the bot logs in, you will automatically be dispatched any events which happened when the bot was offline. If you'd like to ignore all those events and only process going forwards, you should use the DrainDispatcher:

var beanBot = new Botsapp.Bot({
  dispatcher: new Botsapp.DrainDispatcher(),
  adapter: {
    ...
  }
});

TODO

• Groups (join, leave, edit, invite, promote, demote, info)
• Send pictures, videos, vcards, locations
• Sync contacts (to avoid bans)
• Capture group notifications (joins/leaves/edits)
• Unit tests!

Note: Many of these thigs can be done directly with whatsapi on bot.adapter.

Full API description:

Bot(options: Object) => {
  connect: (callback: Function) => void,
  destroy: () => void,
  registerTrigger: (trigger: Trigger, handler: Function, callback: Function) => void,
  sendMessage: (recipient: String, text: String, callback: Function) => void,
}

Trigger(options: Object) => {
  matches: (event: Object) => Boolean,
  always: () => Trigger,
  withText: (text: String, options: Object) => Trigger,
  withEmoji: (emoji: Buffer) => Trigger,
  from: (author: String) => Trigger,
  inGroup: (options: Object) => Trigger,
  custom: (predicate: (event: Object) => Boolean) => Trigger
}