WChats

A very simple Ticket System based on WhatsApp messages.

Backend uses whatsapp-web.js to receive and send WhatsApp messages, create tickets from them and store all in a MySQL database.

Frontend is a full-featured multi-user chat app bootstrapped with react-create-app and Material UI, that comunicates with backend using REST API and Websockets. It allows you to interact with contacts, tickets, send and receive WhatsApp messages.

NOTE: I can't guarantee you will not be blocked by using this method, although it has worked for me. WhatsApp does not allow bots or unofficial clients on their platform, so this shouldn't be considered totally safe.

Motivation

I'm a SysAdmin, and in my daily work, I do a lot of support through WhatsApp. Since WhatsApp Web doesn't allow multiple users, and 90% of our tickets comes from this channel, we created this to share same whatsapp account cross our team.

How it works?

On every new message received in an associated WhatsApp, a new Ticket is created. Then, this ticket can be reached in a queue on Tickets page, where you can assign ticket to your yourself by aceppting it, respond ticket messagee and eventually resolve it.

Subsequent messages from same contact will be related to first open/pending ticket found.

If a contact sent a new message in less than 2 hours interval, and there is no ticket from this contact with pending/open status, the newest closed ticket will be reopen, instead of creating a new one.

Screenshots

Features

• Have multiple users chating in same WhatsApp Number ✅
• Connect to multiple WhatsApp accounts and receive all messages in one place ✅ 🆕
• Create and chat with new contacts without touching cellphone ✅
• Send and receive message ✅
• Send media (images/audio/documents) ✅
• Receive media (images/audio/video/documents) ✅

Demo

Installation and Usage (Linux Ubuntu - Development)

Create Mysql Database using docker: Note: change MYSQL_DATABASE, MYSQL_PASSWORD, MYSQL_USER and MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD.

docker run --name wchatsdb -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=strongpassword -e MYSQL_DATABASE=wchats -e MYSQL_USER=wchats -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=wchats --restart always -p 3306:3306 -d mariadb:latest --character-set-server=utf8mb4 --collation-server=utf8mb4_bin

Install puppeteer dependencies:

sudo apt-get install -y libgbm-dev wget unzip fontconfig locales gconf-service libasound2 libatk1.0-0 libc6 libcairo2 libcups2 libdbus-1-3 libexpat1 libfontconfig1 libgcc1 libgconf-2-4 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libglib2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libnspr4 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 libstdc++6 libx11-6 libx11-xcb1 libxcb1 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxext6 libxfixes3 libxi6 libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxss1 libxtst6 ca-certificates fonts-liberation libappindicator1 libnss3 lsb-release xdg-utils

Clone this repo

git clone https://github.com/ldurans/wchats.com.br.git

Go to backend folder and create .env file:

cp .env.example .env
nano .env

Fill .env file with environment variables:

NODE_ENV=DEVELOPMENT #it helps on debugging
BACKEND_URL=http://localhost
FRONTEND_URL=https://localhost:3000
PROXY_PORT=8080
PORT=8080

POSTGRES_HOST= #DB host IP, usually localhost
DB_DIALECT=
POSTGRES_USER=
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=
POSTGRES_DB=

JWT_SECRET=3123123213123
JWT_REFRESH_SECRET=75756756756

Install backend dependencies, build app, run migrations and seeds:

npm install
npm run build
npx sequelize db:migrate
npx sequelize db:seed:all

Start backend:

npm start

Open a second terminal, go to frontend folder:

Start frontend app:

npm start

• Go to http://your_server_ip:3000/signup
• Create an user and login with it.
• On the sidebard, go to Connections page and create your first WhatsApp connection.
• Wait for QR CODE button to appear, click it and read qr code.
• Done. Every message received by your synced WhatsApp number will appear in Tickets List.

Basic production deployment (Ubuntu 18.04 VPS)

All instructions below assumes you are NOT running as root, since it will give an error in puppeteer. So let's start creating a new user and granting sudo privileges to it:

adduser deploy
usermod -aG sudo deploy

Now we can login with this new user:

su deploy

You'll need two subdomains forwarding to yours VPS ip to follow these instructions. We'll use myapp.mydomain.com to frontend and api.mydomain.com to backend in the following example.

Update all system packages:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Install node and confirm node command is available:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
node -v
npm -v

Install docker and add you user to docker group:

sudo apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu bionic stable"
sudo apt update
sudo apt install docker-ce
sudo systemctl status docker
sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}
su - ${USER}

Create Mysql Database using docker: Note: change MYSQL_DATABASE, MYSQL_PASSWORD, MYSQL_USER and MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD.

docker run --name wchatsdb -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=strongpassword -e MYSQL_DATABASE=wchats -e MYSQL_USER=wchats -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=wchats --restart always -p 3306:3306 -d mariadb:latest --character-set-server=utf8mb4 --collation-server=utf8mb4_bin

Clone this repository:

cd  ~
git clone https://github.com/ldurans/wchats.com.br.git

Create backend .env file and fill with details:

cp wchats/backend/.env.example wchats/backend/.env
nano wchats/backend/.env

NODE_ENV=
BACKEND_URL=https://api.mydomain.com #USE HTTPS HERE, WE WILL ADD SSL LATTER
FRONTEND_URL=https://myapp.mydomain.com #USE HTTPS HERE, WE WILL ADD SSL LATTER, CORS RELATED!
PROXY_PORT=443 #USE NGINX REVERSE PROXY PORT HERE, WE WILL CONFIGURE IT LATTER
PORT=8080

POSTGRES_HOST=localhost
DB_DIALECT=
POSTGRES_USER=
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=
POSTGRES_DB=

JWT_SECRET=3123123213123
JWT_REFRESH_SECRET=75756756756

Install puppeteer dependencies:

sudo apt-get install -y libgbm-dev wget unzip fontconfig locales gconf-service libasound2 libatk1.0-0 libc6 libcairo2 libcups2 libdbus-1-3 libexpat1 libfontconfig1 libgcc1 libgconf-2-4 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libglib2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libnspr4 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 libstdc++6 libx11-6 libx11-xcb1 libxcb1 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxext6 libxfixes3 libxi6 libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxss1 libxtst6 ca-certificates fonts-liberation libappindicator1 libnss3 lsb-release xdg-utils

Install backend dependencies, build app, run migrations and seeds:

cd wchats/backend
npm install
npm run build
npx sequelize db:migrate
npx sequelize db:seed:all

Start it with npm start, you should see: Server started on port... on console. Hit CTRL + C to exit.

Install pm2 with sudo, and start backend with it:

sudo npm install -g pm2
pm2 start dist/server.js --name wchats-backend

Make pm2 auto start afeter reboot:

pm2 startup ubuntu -u `YOUR_USERNAME`

Copy the last line outputed from previus command and run it, its something like:

sudo env PATH=\$PATH:/usr/bin pm2 startup ubuntu -u YOUR_USERNAME --hp /home/YOUR_USERNAM

Go to frontend folder and install dependencies:

cd ../frontend
npm install

Build frontend app:

npm run build

Start frontend with pm2, and save pm2 process list to start automatically after reboot:

pm2 start server.js --name wchats-frontend
pm2 save

To check if it's running, run pm2 list, it should look like:

deploy@ubuntu-whats:~$ pm2 list

┌─────┬─────────────────────────┬─────────────┬─────────┬─────────┬──────────┬────────┬──────┬───────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┐

│ id │ name │ namespace │ version │ mode │ pid │ uptime │ . │ status │ cpu │ mem │ user │ watching │

├─────┼─────────────────────────┼─────────────┼─────────┼─────────┼──────────┼────────┼──────┼───────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────┤

│ 1 │ wchats-frontend │ default │ 0.1.0 │ fork │ 179249 │ 12D │ 0 │ online │ 0.3% │ 50.2mb │ deploy │ disabled │

│ 6 │ wchats-backend │ default │ 1.0.0 │ fork │ 179253 │ 12D │ 15 │ online │ 0.3% │ 118.5mb │ deploy │ disabled │

└─────┴─────────────────────────┴─────────────┴─────────┴─────────┴──────────┴────────┴──────┴───────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┘

Install nginx:

sudo apt install nginx

Remove nginx default site:

sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Create a new nginx site to frontend app:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/wchats-frontend

Edit and fill it with this information, changing server_name to yours equivalent to myapp.mydomain.com:

server {
  server_name myapp.mydomain.com;

  location / {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3333;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
  }

}

Create another one to backend api, changing server_name to yours equivalent to api.mydomain.com, and proxy_pass to your localhost backend node server URL:

sudo cp /etc/nginx/sites-available/wchats-frontend /etc/nginx/sites-available/wchats-backend
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/wchats-backend

server {
  server_name api.mydomain.com;

  location / {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
......
}

Create a symbolic links to enalbe nginx sites:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/wchats-frontend /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/wchats-backend /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

By default, nginx limit body size to 1MB, what isn't enough to some media uploads. Lets change it to 20MB adding a new line to config file:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
...

http {
  ...
  client_max_body_size 20M;  # HANDLE BIGGER UPLOADS
}

Test nginx configuration and restart server:

sudo nginx -t
sudo service nginx restart

Now, enable SSL (https) on your sites to use all app features like notifications and sending audio messages. A easy way to this is using Certbot:

Install certbor with snapd:

sudo snap install --classic certbot

Enable SSL on nginx (Accept all information asked):

sudo certbot --nginx

Upgrading

wchats is a working in progress and we are adding new features frequently. To update your old installation and get all the new features, you can use a bash script like this:

Note: Always check the .env.example and adjust your .env file before upgrading, since some new variable may be added.

nano updateWChats

#!/bin/bash
echo  "Updating WChats, please wait."
cd  ~
cd wchats
git pull
cd backend
npm install
rm -rf dist
npm run build
npx sequelize db:migrate
npx sequelize db:seed
cd ../frontend
npm install
rm -rf build
npm run build
pm2 restart all

echo  "Update finished. Enjoy!"

Make it executable and run it:

chmod +x updateWChats
./updateWChats

Disclaimer

I just started leaning Javascript a few months ago and this is my first project. It may have security issues and many bugs. I recommend using it only on local network.

This project is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with WhatsApp or any of its subsidiaries or its affiliates. The official WhatsApp website can be found at https://whatsapp.com. "WhatsApp" as well as related names, marks, emblems and images are registered trademarks of their respective owners.