Receive WhatsApp Text Messages Using Python

Overview

This guide shows how to receive WhatsApp text messages on a phone number registered against your WhatsApp business account. Typical use cases for receiving messages include customer support,  opt-in and opt-out messages and other customer interactions.

You can start receiving Whatsapp text messages using our APIs. Follow the instructions below.

Prerequisites

To get started, you need a Plivo account — sign up with your work email address if you don’t have one already. If this is your first time using Plivo APIs, follow our instructions to set up a Python development environment.

To receive incoming messages, you must have an onboarded WhatsApp account with inbound capable numbers registered against the same. If the number is in

connected

state, it can receive incoming messages.

Create a Flask application to receive messages

Create a file called receive_whatsapp.py and paste into it this code.

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from flask import Flask, request

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/receive_whatsapp/', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def inbound_sms():

    from_number = request.values.get('From')
    to_number = request.values.get('To')
    text = request.values.get('Body')
    print('Message received - From: %s, To: %s, Text: %s' %(from_number, to_number, text))

    return 'Message Recevived'

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', debug=True)

Configure Webhook URL in your WhatsApp Business Account

As shown below, you can very easily add/update webhook url against a WhatsApp Business Account. Once this step is concluded, you are good to receive incoming messages.

Test

Send a text message to the Plivo number you specified using any phone.