WhatsApp Production Data Bot

WhatsApp bot for SHJM Mill production data collection.

🚀 Deploy to Railway

Step 1 — Push to GitHub

git init
git add .
git commit -m "initial commit"
git branch -M main
git remote add origin https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_REPO.git
git push -u origin main

Step 2 — Deploy on Railway

1. Go to railway.app → New Project → Deploy from GitHub repo
2. Pick your repo
3. Railway will detect the Dockerfile and build automatically (Node 20 + Chromium + all libs come baked in)

Step 3 — Add a Volume (so QR survives redeploys)

1. Service → Settings → Volumes → + New Volume
2. Mount path: /app/.wwebjs_auth
3. Save

Step 4 — Scan QR

1. Open Deployments → latest deployment → View Logs
2. A QR code appears in the logs
3. WhatsApp on phone → Settings → Linked Devices → Link a Device → scan it

✅ Done. Send "Hi" to your number to test.

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⚠️ Why a Dockerfile?

The previous nixpacks.toml approach failed because Railway's Nixpacks builder didn't apply the apt packages reliably, so Chromium couldn't find libglib-2.0.so.0.

The Dockerfile includes every shared library Chromium needs and forces Puppeteer to use the system Chromium at /usr/bin/chromium instead of downloading its own. This is the standard, reliable way to run whatsapp-web.js on Railway.

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🛠️ Run Locally

npm install
npm start

A QR code will print in your terminal.

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📁 Files

.
├── Dockerfile         # Build instructions (Node 20 + Chromium + libs)
├── railway.json       # Tells Railway to use the Dockerfile
├── .dockerignore      # Keeps image small
├── index.js           # Bot logic
├── menus.js           # Department + OCR menus
├── package.json       # Dependencies
├── .gitignore
└── README.md