purple-gowhatsapp

A libpurple/Pidgin plugin for WhatsApp Web.

Being developed on Ubuntu 18.04.
Last seen working with go-whatsapp d7754af.

Building

Build using the supplied Makefile.
Optional: Try make update-dep for the most recent go-whatsapp version.

Pre-Built Binaries

Download a nightly build (Ubuntu 18.04).
Windows binaries are kindly provided by EionRobb on occasion.

Installation

Place the binary in your Pidgin's plugin directory (~/.purple/plugins on Linux).

Set-up

Create a new account
You can enter an arbitrary username. However, it is recommended to use your own internationalized number, followed by @s.whatsapp.net.
Example: 123456789 from Germany would use 49123456789@s.whatsapp.net.
This way, Pidgin's logs look sane.
Upon login, a fake conversation should pop up, showing a link to a QR code.
Using your phone's camera, scan the code within 20 seconds – just like you would do with the browser-based WhatsApp Web.
Note: Some settings only take effect after a re-connect.

Please also notice the wiki page regarding common problems.

spectrum2 specifics

Spectrum 2 users must set this plug-in's option system-messages-are-ordinary-messages to true. By default, the log-in message is a system message and Spectrum 2 ignores system messages.

Features

Receive text messages.
Sending text messages.
Download files from image, audio, media, and document messages.
Files are downloaded to ~/.pidgin/gowhatsapp.
Fetch contacts from phone, keep track of time last seen courtesy of Markus Gothe.
Under the hood: Reasonable callback mechanism thanks to Eiron Robb.

Missing Features

Anything beyond simple messaging, really

What could be done next

From approximate most important to approximate least interesting.

Find memory leak.
Support stickers.
Add proxy support.
Use a callback for getting current preferences everywhere consistently.
Have purple handle the message, then conditionally request download where appropriate.
Add option to ignore invalid message IDs silently.
Sanitize invalid message IDs (e.g. I/fb36).
Support group conversations properly.
Sort old messages by date.
Improve spectrum support:
- Make online status work.
- Handle incoming files the way purple-skypeweb does.
Support sending document messages.
Find out how whatsapp represents newlines.
Wait for server message received acknowledgement before displaying sent message locally.
Do not block while sending message.
Defer logging debug messages from go-whatsapp to purple_debug_info().
Refactor the file-handling code as it is really ugly.
Be compatible with the "Autoreply" plug-in by having an "Away" state.
Be compatible with the "Conversation Colors" plug-in.
Find spurious segfault.
Consistently use dashes in key names.

EionRobb / purple-gowhatsapp