Since Camel 3.19
Only producer is supported
The WhatsApp component provides access to the WhatsApp Cloud API. It allows a Camel-based application to send messages using a cloud-hosted version of the WhatsApp Business Platform.
Before using this component you have to set up Developer Assets and Platform Access, following the instructions at the Register WhatsApp Business Cloud API account. Once the account is set up you can navigate to Meta for Developers Apps, in order to access to the WhatsApp dashboard where you can get the authorization token, phone number id and you can add recipient phone numbers, these parameters are mandatory in order to use the component.=
Maven users will need to add the following dependency to their pom.xml for this component:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
<artifactId>camel-whatsapp</artifactId>
<version>x.x.x</version>
<!-- use the same version as your Camel core version -->
</dependency>Configuring Options
Camel components are configured on two separate levels:
-
component level
-
endpoint level
Configuring Component Options
The component level is the highest level which holds general and common configurations that are inherited by the endpoints. For example a component may have security settings, credentials for authentication, urls for network connection and so forth.
Some components only have a few options, and others may have many. Because components typically have pre configured defaults that are commonly used, then you may often only need to configure a few options on a component; or none at all.
Configuring components can be done with the Component DSL, in a configuration file (application.properties|yaml), or directly with Java code.
Configuring Endpoint Options
Where you find yourself configuring the most is on endpoints, as endpoints often have many options, which allows you to configure what you need the endpoint to do. The options are also categorized into whether the endpoint is used as consumer (from) or as a producer (to), or used for both.
Configuring endpoints is most often done directly in the endpoint URI as path and query parameters. You can also use the Endpoint DSL and DataFormat DSL as a type safe way of configuring endpoints and data formats in Java.
A good practice when configuring options is to use Property Placeholders, which allows to not hardcode urls, port numbers, sensitive information, and other settings. In other words placeholders allows to externalize the configuration from your code, and gives more flexibility and reuse.
The following two sections lists all the options, firstly for the component followed by the endpoint.
Component Options
The WhatsApp component supports 8 options, which are listed below.
| Name | Description | Default | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
Whether the producer should be started lazy (on the first message). By starting lazy you can use this to allow CamelContext and routes to startup in situations where a producer may otherwise fail during starting and cause the route to fail being started. By deferring this startup to be lazy then the startup failure can be handled during routing messages via Camel’s routing error handlers. Beware that when the first message is processed then creating and starting the producer may take a little time and prolong the total processing time of the processing. | false | boolean | |
Required Phone Number ID taken from WhatsApp Meta for Developers Dashboard. | String | ||
WhatsApp Cloud API version. | v13.0 | String | |
Whether autowiring is enabled. This is used for automatic autowiring options (the option must be marked as autowired) by looking up in the registry to find if there is a single instance of matching type, which then gets configured on the component. This can be used for automatic configuring JDBC data sources, JMS connection factories, AWS Clients, etc. | true | boolean | |
Can be used to set an alternative base URI, e.g. when you want to test the component against a mock WhatsApp API. | String | ||
Java 11 HttpClient implementation. | HttpClient | ||
Webhook verify token. | String | ||
Required Authorization Token taken from WhatsApp Meta for Developers Dashboard. | String |
Endpoint Options
The WhatsApp endpoint is configured using URI syntax:
whatsapp:phoneNumberId
with the following path and query parameters:
Query Parameters (8 parameters)
| Name | Description | Default | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
Whether the producer should be started lazy (on the first message). By starting lazy you can use this to allow CamelContext and routes to startup in situations where a producer may otherwise fail during starting and cause the route to fail being started. By deferring this startup to be lazy then the startup failure can be handled during routing messages via Camel’s routing error handlers. Beware that when the first message is processed then creating and starting the producer may take a little time and prolong the total processing time of the processing. | false | boolean | |
Facebook graph api version. | String | ||
Can be used to set an alternative base URI, e.g. when you want to test the component against a mock WhatsApp API. | String | ||
HttpClient implementation. | HttpClient | ||
Webhook path. | webhook | String | |
Webhook verify token. | String | ||
WhatsApp service implementation. | WhatsAppService | ||
Required The authorization access token taken from whatsapp-business dashboard. | String |
Message Headers
The WhatsApp component supports 2 message header(s), which is/are listed below:
| Name | Description | Default | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
CamelWhatsAppPhoneNumberId (producer) Constant: | Phone Number ID taken from WhatsApp Meta for Developers Dashboard. | Object | |
CamelWhatsAppRecipientPhoneNumberId (producer) Constant: | Recipient phone number associated with Phone Number ID. | Object |
Producer Example
The following is a basic example of how to send a message to a WhatsApp chat through the Business Cloud API.
in Java DSL
from("direct:start")
.process(exchange -> {
TextMessageRequest request = new TextMessageRequest();
request.setTo(insertYourRecipientPhoneNumberHere);
request.setText(new TextMessage());
request.getText().setBody("This is an auto-generated message from Camel \uD83D\uDC2B");
exchange.getIn().setBody(request);
})
.to("whatsapp:123456789:insertYourPhoneNumberIdHere?authorizationToken=123456789:insertYourAuthorizationTokenHere");For more information you can refer to Cloud API Reference, Supported API are: Messages and Media
Webhook Mode
The Whatsapp component supports usage in the webhook mode using the camel-webhook component.
In order to enable webhook mode, users need first to add a REST implementation to their application. Maven users, for example, can add netty-http to their pom.xml file:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
<artifactId>camel-netty-http</artifactId>
</dependency>Once done, you need to prepend the webhook URI to the whatsapp URI you want to use.
In Java DSL:
fromF("webhook:whatsapp:%s?authorizationToken=%s&webhookVerifyToken=%s", "<phoneNumberId>", "<AuthorizationToken>", "<webhookVerifyToken>").log("${body}")In order to enable and configure the webhook, the following guide can be used https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/cloud-api/guides/set-up-webhooks the webhook component will expose an endpoint that can be used into the whatsapp administration console.
Refer to the camel-webhook component documentation for instructions on how to set it.