7 ms·

Show HN: Whapp-irc – A simple WhatsApp IRC gateway

100 points by lieuwex 8y ago

coldsauce 8y ago
why hasn't there been anything like this for iMessage? or any 3rd party applications at all, really.
- yzb 8y ago
  Is iMessage even a thing outside the US? Everybody in Europe uses WA or Messenger, at least
  - wongarsu 8y ago
    The iPhone has about a 56% market share in the US, compared to a 26% market share in Europe (with the UK being the outsider with 52% market share). That makes a huge difference: in Europe it's very unlikely that everyone out of any group of friends has an iPhone, making Whatsapp, Telegram etc the goto solutions for group messages. Apple is also huge in Japan, but I don't know what kind of chat apps are used there.
    - komali2 8y ago
      Line, mostly.
    - madeofpalk 8y ago
      idk, most people I know here in the UK have both iPhones and WhatsApp. Back in Australia, iPhones is fairly pervasive, and so is WhatsApp.
  - egze 8y ago
    I‘m from EU and prefer iMessage to anything else.
  - azag0 8y ago
    I'm from EU and it is a thing. I use iMessages whenever the other side has an iPhone. In my social circle, it's about two thirds. But it is also true that many people who have an iPhone still use Whatsapp or Messenger as the default communication channel even if the other side has an iPhone as well.
  - baroffoos 8y ago
    Its certainly not the default in Australia. Only a few people I know have iPhones. SMS is always the default messaging app unless you have added the person on something else which is a bit of a mess between different services.
- benmarten 8y ago
  because iMessage is closed api by apple. and they likely will prohibit any interference with their api...
  - beagle3 8y ago
    WhatsApp is as closed and guarded (even though better documented through reverse engineering). And this obviously does exist. So that’s not the reason.
    - johannes1234321 8y ago
      This thing here apparently uses WhatsApp web, which might be simpler to use than a full reverse of iMessage and its protocol.
- badrabbit 8y ago
  A Signal gateway would be nice but an irc gateway to a e2e secure platform might constitute a reduction of security for all involved parties. There are jabber and slack gateways. In practicality,I would like to see a gitter to IRC gateway,because of foss projects usage of both platforms.
  - 42wim 8y ago
    Check out matterbridge (https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge) which bridges gitter, irc and much more :-)
    - badrabbit 8y ago
      Neat,thanks.
  - metildaa 8y ago
    Signal Weechat does this iirc, there are a few other alternative clients out there too: https://github.com/thefinn93/signal-weechat https://github.com/thefinn93/signal-weechat
- arrivance 8y ago
  I don't know whether this falls within that, but some people have made iMessage "versions" for Android by using a Mac computer as a bridge. https://github.com/RomanScott/weMessage https://github.com/RomanScott/weMessage
- trulyrandom 8y ago
  They do exist. Here's one for Discord: https://github.com/reactiflux/discord-irc https://github.com/reactiflux/discord-irc
- earenndil 8y ago
  There was someone who made something like that, but didn't make it public for fear of getting C&D'd by apple.
- ComputerGuru 8y ago
  I created a native iMessage app for Windows 10: https://neosmart.net/blog/2018/imessage-for-windows/ https://neosmart.net/blog/2018/imessage-for-windows/ Taking full advantage of UWP features and functionality.
  - asasas2321323 8y ago
    Where is the app itself?
airstrike 8y ago
Time to finally add a bot to my WhatsApp group chat!
- isoprophlex 8y ago
  My thoughts exactly! What do you recommend in terms of IRC bot building tools?
  - baroffoos 8y ago
    There are a whole bunch of tools but you really only want something simple that gives you an infinite loop that runs every time a message comes in and gives you access to the current message as an object
aclimatt 8y ago
It looks like this opens a copy of WhatsApp Web and instruments it as its client. And it uses compiled class names like `._2EZ_m` to interact with the DOM. Unless I'm missing something, this will probably break weekly or every time they release a new build of the frontend. Not sure if there's a better way?
- toxicFork 8y ago
  One alternative is sandboxing the js code (or using existing browser or networking logging capabilities) to reverse engineer network requests and write a more raw client instead of piggybacking onto the web client, that would still have risks of changes but less likely than this.
  - est31 8y ago
    > reverse engineer network requests and write a more raw client People already have done that. The most famous example is the yowsup [1] python library. The problem with these client implementations is that WhatsApp is banning any numbers that use them [2]. So most recent attempts to use WhatsApp outside of the official clients revolve around using WhatsApp Web somehow. That appears to work better, but even here if you are using it on a long term basis, WhatsApp might ban you. Ultimately, WhatsApp is a bad host when it comes to using their service outside of the official app. This is really sad for people like me who don't want to install WhatsApp on their phones because it sends too much of my data to Facebook... probably that's precisely why they are so strict, to get all the data because that's all they get (the service is gratis after all). That and spam. [1]: https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup [2]: http://google.com/search?q=yowsup+name+ban http://google.com/search?q=yowsup+name+ban
    - sopooneo 8y ago
      How can the server component of WhatsApp tell that the client is using the Python library you mention? If that library implements the protocol correctly, shouldn't it be indistinguishable from the official web client to the server?
askthrowaway 8y ago
My solution was to run WhatsApp in emulator and enable adb over tcp and send adb commands from server directly to emulator. I automate sending messages and pdf files from our erp system. and for receiving messages we just have a Whatsapp web available for one of our employee so he can reply and escalate whatever.
- octorian 8y ago
  What's a shame here is that the "WhatsApp Business API Client" [1] would actually be the perfect tool for personal projects like this. Unfortunately, its still being reserved for use by only larger businesses planning to use it at scale, so they can be meaningfully paying customers. Offering low-volume non-customer-facing free access to a product like this would likely make everyone here quite happy. [1]: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/getting-started/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/getting-starte...
  - Carpetsmoker 8y ago
    > Offering low-volume non-customer-facing free access to a product like this would likely make everyone here quite happy. I suspect that one reason they're not doing that is to prevent spambots. This is probably a valid concern, as experience as shown that preventing spam is a hard problem.
  - est31 8y ago
    Indeed, it would be great to have something like this for non-business customers as well. Right now it's very much targeted at large businesses atm and seems to want a beefy computer, so you can't really install it on your RPI. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/faq https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/faq > For single-instance production server setup, we recommend at least 250 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM, and 4 core CPU. https://www.facebook.com/business/m/whatsapp/business-api/ https://www.facebook.com/business/m/whatsapp/business-api/ > In order to ensure a high quality experience for businesses and users, we're in a limited public preview. If you'd like to work with us, submit more information about your business for consideration as we continue to expand our availability.
nc 8y ago
Why did you build this? What are you using it for?
- lieuwex 8y ago
  I wanted to chat using WhatsApp comfortably using my Weechat setup.
sam0x17 8y ago
should call it WhatsIRC On that point though, what do people think when they see WhatsApp the name? I get the whole whats up thing, but whenever I see the name I think "What's App???" as in What is App???
chirau 8y ago
Is there any chance Whatsapp the company will try to take this down and if they do is there any chance it might survive? Whatsapp has been notorious for taking down third party APIs and any tools that allow message automation.
Arathorn 8y ago
fwiw, a similar project for bridging WhatsApp into Matrix is https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-whatsapp https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-whatsapp.
rapnie 8y ago
Very nice project. I would like to move away from WhatsApp for privacy reasons and out of principle. Could I use this to set an auto-reply message to users contacting me, redirecting them to my new messenger e.g. Signal?
- tomsmeding 8y ago
  If you don't mind having a phone (or emulated phone) being on at all times running the whatsapp native app, and if you make an IRC bot that automatically replies to things, yes that's possible.

100 points by lieuwex 8y ago

coldsauce 8y ago

why hasn't there been anything like this for iMessage? or any 3rd party applications at all, really.

yzb 8y ago
Is iMessage even a thing outside the US? Everybody in Europe uses WA or Messenger, at least
- wongarsu 8y ago
  The iPhone has about a 56% market share in the US, compared to a 26% market share in Europe (with the UK being the outsider with 52% market share). That makes a huge difference: in Europe it's very unlikely that everyone out of any group of friends has an iPhone, making Whatsapp, Telegram etc the goto solutions for group messages. Apple is also huge in Japan, but I don't know what kind of chat apps are used there.
  - komali2 8y ago
    Line, mostly.
  - madeofpalk 8y ago
    idk, most people I know here in the UK have both iPhones and WhatsApp. Back in Australia, iPhones is fairly pervasive, and so is WhatsApp.
- egze 8y ago
  I‘m from EU and prefer iMessage to anything else.
- azag0 8y ago
  I'm from EU and it is a thing. I use iMessages whenever the other side has an iPhone. In my social circle, it's about two thirds. But it is also true that many people who have an iPhone still use Whatsapp or Messenger as the default communication channel even if the other side has an iPhone as well.
- baroffoos 8y ago
  Its certainly not the default in Australia. Only a few people I know have iPhones. SMS is always the default messaging app unless you have added the person on something else which is a bit of a mess between different services.
benmarten 8y ago
because iMessage is closed api by apple. and they likely will prohibit any interference with their api...
- beagle3 8y ago
  WhatsApp is as closed and guarded (even though better documented through reverse engineering). And this obviously does exist. So that’s not the reason.
  - johannes1234321 8y ago
    This thing here apparently uses WhatsApp web, which might be simpler to use than a full reverse of iMessage and its protocol.
badrabbit 8y ago
A Signal gateway would be nice but an irc gateway to a e2e secure platform might constitute a reduction of security for all involved parties. There are jabber and slack gateways. In practicality,I would like to see a gitter to IRC gateway,because of foss projects usage of both platforms.
- 42wim 8y ago
  Check out matterbridge (https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge) which bridges gitter, irc and much more :-)
  - badrabbit 8y ago
    Neat,thanks.
- metildaa 8y ago
  Signal Weechat does this iirc, there are a few other alternative clients out there too: https://github.com/thefinn93/signal-weechat https://github.com/thefinn93/signal-weechat
arrivance 8y ago
I don't know whether this falls within that, but some people have made iMessage "versions" for Android by using a Mac computer as a bridge. https://github.com/RomanScott/weMessage https://github.com/RomanScott/weMessage
trulyrandom 8y ago
They do exist. Here's one for Discord: https://github.com/reactiflux/discord-irc https://github.com/reactiflux/discord-irc
earenndil 8y ago
There was someone who made something like that, but didn't make it public for fear of getting C&D'd by apple.
ComputerGuru 8y ago
I created a native iMessage app for Windows 10: https://neosmart.net/blog/2018/imessage-for-windows/ https://neosmart.net/blog/2018/imessage-for-windows/ Taking full advantage of UWP features and functionality.
- asasas2321323 8y ago
  Where is the app itself?

airstrike 8y ago

Time to finally add a bot to my WhatsApp group chat!

isoprophlex 8y ago
My thoughts exactly! What do you recommend in terms of IRC bot building tools?
- baroffoos 8y ago
  There are a whole bunch of tools but you really only want something simple that gives you an infinite loop that runs every time a message comes in and gives you access to the current message as an object

aclimatt 8y ago

It looks like this opens a copy of WhatsApp Web and instruments it as its client. And it uses compiled class names like `._2EZ_m` to interact with the DOM. Unless I'm missing something, this will probably break weekly or every time they release a new build of the frontend. Not sure if there's a better way?

toxicFork 8y ago
One alternative is sandboxing the js code (or using existing browser or networking logging capabilities) to reverse engineer network requests and write a more raw client instead of piggybacking onto the web client, that would still have risks of changes but less likely than this.
- est31 8y ago
  > reverse engineer network requests and write a more raw client People already have done that. The most famous example is the yowsup [1] python library. The problem with these client implementations is that WhatsApp is banning any numbers that use them [2]. So most recent attempts to use WhatsApp outside of the official clients revolve around using WhatsApp Web somehow. That appears to work better, but even here if you are using it on a long term basis, WhatsApp might ban you. Ultimately, WhatsApp is a bad host when it comes to using their service outside of the official app. This is really sad for people like me who don't want to install WhatsApp on their phones because it sends too much of my data to Facebook... probably that's precisely why they are so strict, to get all the data because that's all they get (the service is gratis after all). That and spam. [1]: https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup [2]: http://google.com/search?q=yowsup+name+ban http://google.com/search?q=yowsup+name+ban
  - sopooneo 8y ago
    How can the server component of WhatsApp tell that the client is using the Python library you mention? If that library implements the protocol correctly, shouldn't it be indistinguishable from the official web client to the server?

askthrowaway 8y ago

My solution was to run WhatsApp in emulator and enable adb over tcp and send adb commands from server directly to emulator. I automate sending messages and pdf files from our erp system. and for receiving messages we just have a Whatsapp web available for one of our employee so he can reply and escalate whatever.

octorian 8y ago
What's a shame here is that the "WhatsApp Business API Client" [1] would actually be the perfect tool for personal projects like this. Unfortunately, its still being reserved for use by only larger businesses planning to use it at scale, so they can be meaningfully paying customers. Offering low-volume non-customer-facing free access to a product like this would likely make everyone here quite happy. [1]: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/getting-started/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/getting-starte...
- Carpetsmoker 8y ago
  > Offering low-volume non-customer-facing free access to a product like this would likely make everyone here quite happy. I suspect that one reason they're not doing that is to prevent spambots. This is probably a valid concern, as experience as shown that preventing spam is a hard problem.
- est31 8y ago
  Indeed, it would be great to have something like this for non-business customers as well. Right now it's very much targeted at large businesses atm and seems to want a beefy computer, so you can't really install it on your RPI. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/faq https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/faq > For single-instance production server setup, we recommend at least 250 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM, and 4 core CPU. https://www.facebook.com/business/m/whatsapp/business-api/ https://www.facebook.com/business/m/whatsapp/business-api/ > In order to ensure a high quality experience for businesses and users, we're in a limited public preview. If you'd like to work with us, submit more information about your business for consideration as we continue to expand our availability.

nc 8y ago

Why did you build this? What are you using it for?

lieuwex 8y ago
I wanted to chat using WhatsApp comfortably using my Weechat setup.

sam0x17 8y ago

should call it WhatsIRC On that point though, what do people think when they see WhatsApp the name? I get the whole whats up thing, but whenever I see the name I think "What's App???" as in What is App???

chirau 8y ago

Is there any chance Whatsapp the company will try to take this down and if they do is there any chance it might survive? Whatsapp has been notorious for taking down third party APIs and any tools that allow message automation.

Arathorn 8y ago

fwiw, a similar project for bridging WhatsApp into Matrix is https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-whatsapp https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-whatsapp.

rapnie 8y ago

Very nice project. I would like to move away from WhatsApp for privacy reasons and out of principle. Could I use this to set an auto-reply message to users contacting me, redirecting them to my new messenger e.g. Signal?

tomsmeding 8y ago
If you don't mind having a phone (or emulated phone) being on at all times running the whatsapp native app, and if you make an IRC bot that automatically replies to things, yes that's possible.