purple-gowhatsapp

A libpurple/Pidgin plugin for WhatsApp Web.

Powered by go-whatsapp, which is written by Lucas Engelke.

Being developed on Ubuntu 18.04.
Last seen working with go-whatsapp 9b4bc38.

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 and Windows).
• Tested 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 QR code is shown in a Pidgin request window.
  Using your phone's camera, scan the code within 20 seconds – just like you would do with the browser-based WhatsApp Web.
  Alternatively, you can receive the login code as an image message, as a file or as plain text (user configurable).
• 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.
• Under the hood: Reasonable callback mechanism thanks to Eiron Robb.
• Fetch contacts from phone, keep track of time last seen, download of user profile pictures courtesy of Markus Gothe.

Note: You may need to force the TLS version to 1.2 using the NSS plug-in for download of user profile pictures to work on some systems.

Missing Features

• Anything beyond simple messaging, really

What could be done next

From approximate most important to approximate least interesting.

• Find memory leaks.
• Support stickers #32.
• Improve proxy support: Get proxy configuration from environment variables, if requested.
• Use a callback for getting current preferences everywhere consistently.
• Have purple handle the message, then conditionally request download where appropriate.
• 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.
• Wait for server message received acknowledgement before displaying sent message locally.
• Do not block while sending message.
• Mark messages as "read" only after the user interacted with the conversation #47.
• 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.
• Consistently use dashes in key names.