> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://plivo.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Send Templated Messages

> Send pre-approved WhatsApp templated messages to initiate conversations

## **Overview**

This guide shows how to send a templated WhatsApp message to any destination WhatsApp number. Templated messages are crucial to your WhatsApp messaging experience, as businesses can only initiate WhatsApp conversations using templated messages. 

WhatsApp templates support 4 components:  `header` ,  `body`,  `footer`  and `button`. At the point of sending messages, the template object you see in the code acts as a way to pass the dynamic values within these components.  `header`  can accomodate `text` or `media` (images, video, documents) content.  `body`  can accomodate `text` content.  `button`  can support dynamic values in a `url` button or to specify a developer-defined payload which will be returned when the WhatsApp user clicks on the `quick_reply` button. `footer`  cannot have any dynamic variables.

You can start sending templated WhatsApp messages using our APIs. Follow these instructions.

## **Prerequisites**

To get started, you need a Plivo account — [sign up](https://cx.plivo.com/signup) 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 Java development environment](/sdk/server/java-sdk).

Once you have a Plivo account, follow our [WhatsApp guide](/messaging/concepts/whatsapp/) to onboard your WhatsApp account, register a number against your WABA, and have a template in an approved state.

If you phone number is in `connected` state and template is in `approved` state, you can send your first message.

## **Create the send WhatsApp application**

Create a file called `WhatsappMessageCreate.java` and paste into it this code.

```java theme={null}

import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.Collections;

import com.plivo.api.Plivo;
import com.plivo.api.exceptions.PlivoRestException;
import com.plivo.api.models.message.Message;
import com.plivo.api.models.message.MessageCreateResponse;
import com.plivo.api.models.message.MessageType;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;

class MessageCreate
{
    public static void main(String [] args)
    {
        Plivo.init('<auth_id>','<auth_token>');
        try
        {

        String templateJson = "{
            "\name\": "\sample_purchase_feedback\",
            "\language\": "\en_US\",
            "\components\": [
                {
                    "\type\": "\header\",
                    "\parameters\": [
                        {
                            "\type\": "\media\",
                            "\text\": "\https://plivo.com/s3/img1.jpg\"
                        }
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "\type\": "\body\",
                    "\parameters\": [
                        {
                            "\type\": "\text\",
                            "\text\": "\John Doe\"
                        }
                    ]
                },
               {
                    "\type\": "\button\",
                    "\sub_type\": "\quick_reply\",
                    "\index\": "\0\",
                    "\parameters\": [
                        {
                            "\type\": "\payload\",
                            "\payload\": "\Payload sent in inbound webhook response\"
                        }
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "\type\": "\button\",
                    "\sub_type\": "\url\",
                    "\index\": "\1\",
                    "\parameters\": [
                        {
                            "\type\": "\text\",
                            "\text\": "\replacement text which will append to url\"
                        }
                    ]
                }

            ]
          }";

MessageCreateResponse response = Message.creator("+14151112221","14151112222")
                    .template_json_string(templateJson)
                    .type(MessageType.WHATSAPP)
                    .url(new URL("https://<yourdomain>.com/sms_status/") )
                    .create();
          ObjectMapper ow = new ObjectMapper();
          String output = ow.writeValueAsString(response);
          System.out.println(output);
        }

        catch (PlivoRestException | IOException e)
        {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}
```

Replace the auth placeholders with your authentication credentials from the [Plivo console](https://cx.plivo.com/home). Replace the phone number placeholders with actual phone numbers in [E.164 format](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.164) (for example, +12025551234).  `src` would be your phone number registered against your WhatsApp business account.  `dst`   would be the destination WhatsApp number that would receive the message. 

<Note>
  <strong>Note:</strong> We recommend that you store your credentials in the `auth_id` and `auth_token` environment variables to avoid the possibility of accidentally committing them to source control. If you do this, you can initialize the client with no arguments and Plivo will automatically fetch the values from the environment variables. You can use process.env to store environment variables and fetch them when initializing the client.
</Note>

## **Test**

Save the file and run it.

<Note>
  Note: If you’re using a Plivo Trial account, you can send messages only to phone numbers that have been verified with Plivo. You can verify (sandbox) a number by going to the console’s Phone Numbers > <a href="https://cx.plivo.com/home">Sandbox Numbers</a> page.
</Note>