Akbarwala 🗞

Setting up

To set up your own version of this Whatsapp bot

• Create an account on Twilio and obtain the auth token and account SSID.
• Set up the Whatsapp sandbox on Twilio. (Docs here)
• Deploy this node project to service of your choice. I prefer repl.it
• Create .env file with the following:

TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID = Your account SSID (obtained from Twilio)

TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN = Twilio Authorisation Token (obtained from Twilio)

SANDBOX_NUMBER = The twilio number with which you interact (obtained from Twilio)

API_URL = The base url where this node project is hosted (eg. akbharwala.herokuapp.com)

• You can now send "Paper" to the Twilio number to receive the newspaper. This logic is handled by the /incoming route.

• You can also send the newspaper by the /send route by appending the phone number like this akbharwala.herokuapp.com?ph=+xxxxxxxxxxx. It is possible to send it to multiple authorised phone numbers at once by separating them with commas.

Make sure the phone number to which you are sending the newspaper is in the sandbox.

• To update the paper, you can run a cron job on /update which fetches the paper once a day

Limitation of Twilio Whatsapp Sandbox API

I tried to automate the process by sending the paper automatically every morning but there's a limitation on the API which doesn't allow you send messages after the 24 hour window.

From Twilio's Docs:

A WhatsApp session begins when a user sends a message to your app. Sessions are valid for 24 hours after the most recently received message, during which you can communicate with customers using free-form messages. To send a message outside the 24-hour session window, you must use a pre-approved message template.