• Source: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/cloud-api/get-started
• Icon Support: No
• Attachment Support: No
• Message Format: Text
• Message Limit: 1024 Characters per message

To send WhatsApp messages via Apprise, you must first configure your Meta WhatsApp Cloud API account. Follow these steps:

1. Create a Meta Developer Account
   Go to Meta for Developers and log in or create an account.
2. Create a WhatsApp App
   From the Meta Developer Dashboard, create a new App and add WhatsApp as a product.
3. Generate a Permanent Access Token
   • Navigate to your app's WhatsApp > API Setup section.
   • Select or create a System User, then assign a role and generate a permanent access token with whatsapp_business_messaging permissions.
   • This token is used in the Apprise token field.
4. Locate Your From Phone Number ID
   This is not your actual phone number. It’s a numeric ID assigned by Meta to the sender number.
   You can find it in your WhatsApp App > API Setup section under Phone Numbers.
5. Register Your Recipient Number(s)
   • During sandbox testing, you must verify any phone number you wish to message through Meta’s interface.
   • For production, your business must be verified and have the appropriate messaging tier.
6. (Optional) Create and Approve Message Templates
   • Navigate to WhatsApp > Message Templates.
   • Create a template (e.g., hello_world) and await approval.
   • Templates allow structured messaging with variables (e.g., {{1}}, {{2}}) and can be used with Apprise's template: prefix. This is explained further below.

Once everything is in place, you're ready to send WhatsApp messages through Apprise.

Valid syntax is as follows:

• whatsapp://{token}@{from_phone_id}/{targets}
• whatsapp://{template}:{token}@{from_phone_id}/{targets}

The templates you generate allow you to specify {{1}} and {{2}}, etc which are substituted during the Apprise runtime. To pre-set these values, simply leverage the : (colon) prefix in front of the index you wish to define.

?:3=My Value for example would assign My Value to {{3}} during the runtime. You must identify all indexes defined or you will get an error from the upstream server.

If you wish to assign the body or type from Apprise, these special keywords are specified instead with the : (colon) prefix providing the mapping/over-ride. For example: ?:body=1 would be accepted and would assign {{1}} the contents of the body passed into Apprise.

Additional Template Notes

1. The template header must be set to either '' (empty) or assigned content.
2. Variables in the message body, if any, must use the number format, e.g. {{1}}, as opposed to the named variables format, e.g. {{order_id}}

Send a WhatsApp Notification:

# Test out the changes with the following command:
apprise -b "Test Message" \
  "whatsapp://token@from_phone_id/to_phone_no/"

# Templates can be handled like so:
apprise -b "Test Message" \
  "whatsapp://template_name:token@from_phone_id/to_phone_no/"

# If you have defined {{1}} and {{2}} tokens, you can assign them values like so:
apprise -b "Test Message" \
  "whatsapp://template_name:token@from_phone_id/to_phone_no/?:1=the data i want put here&:2=more data here"

# The :<id> is how you map {{<id>}}elements. If you want to associated the body or 
# message type with an id, then there are 2 reserved keywords that you can use for this:
# The below would make sure the Apprise Body value would be placed in the {{1}} element:
apprise -b "Test Message" \
  "whatsapp://template_name:token@from_phone_id/to_phone_no/?:body=1"

# You can mix and match the keywords and types:
apprise -b "Test Message" \
  "whatsapp://template_name:token@from_phone_id/to_phone_no/?:body=2&:type=3&1:MyID1Value"

# It's up to the developer to make sure that all of the {{1}}, {{2}}, etc are assigned correctly