A python script for extracting WhatsApp conversations from the app's SQLite database and exporting them as HTML or txt files.
- Export WhatsApp chats to a WhatsApp Web like HTML page.
- Export WhatsApp chats to txt files (one per chat).
- Prerequisite: The Whatsapp database files must be available (see the following section).
- Supply all configuration values in
config.cfg. Here, the paths to the database files must be given. Thewa.dbdatabase is only needed for adding names of contacts and does not need to be used. - Run the main script.
python3 main.pyFor retrieving the WhatsApp database files from an Android device there are several options. Two of them are described in this section.
WhatsApp stores all messages in SQLite databases in the app directory /data/data/com.whatsapp/. These can be
downloaded to a computer using adb, e.g. when the Android device is booted to a recovery such as TWRP
(or when the device is rooted). Copy all WhatsApp files to the local directory my_WhatsApp using the following command.
adb pull /data/data/com.whatsapp/ my_WhatsApp/The directory my_WhatsApp now contains the following relevant files:
com.whatsapp/databases/msgstore.db: The database for storing all messages.com.whatsapp/databases/wa.db: The database for storing contacts.
It is also possible to decrypt a WhatsApp backup file. These backups are generated by WhatsApp and can be found in the
publicly accessible device storage (e.g. sdcard0/WhatsApp/Databases/msgstore.db.crypt12).
Obviously, the decryption key (which is stored in the app's private storage) is still required. The tool
WhatsApp-Crypt12-Decrypter can be used to decrypt a backup file:
python3 decrypt12.py key msgstore.db.crypt12 msgstore.db
This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.
This project is not endorsed or certified by WhatsApp Inc.