Since Camel 3.18
Both producer and consumer are 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 as a type safe way of configuring endpoints.
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 9 options, which are listed below.
Name | Description | Default | Type |
---|---|---|---|
Required Phone Number ID taken from WhatsApp Meta for Developers Dashboard. | String | ||
Allows for bridging the consumer to the Camel routing Error Handler, which mean any exceptions occurred while the consumer is trying to pickup incoming messages, or the likes, will now be processed as a message and handled by the routing Error Handler. By default the consumer will use the org.apache.camel.spi.ExceptionHandler to deal with exceptions, that will be logged at WARN or ERROR level and ignored. | false | boolean | |
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 | |
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 (27 parameters)
Name | Description | Default | Type |
---|---|---|---|
If the polling consumer did not poll any files, you can enable this option to send an empty message (no body) instead. | false | boolean | |
Allows for bridging the consumer to the Camel routing Error Handler, which mean any exceptions occurred while the consumer is trying to pickup incoming messages, or the likes, will now be processed as a message and handled by the routing Error Handler. By default the consumer will use the org.apache.camel.spi.ExceptionHandler to deal with exceptions, that will be logged at WARN or ERROR level and ignored. | false | boolean | |
To let the consumer use a custom ExceptionHandler. Notice if the option bridgeErrorHandler is enabled then this option is not in use. By default the consumer will deal with exceptions, that will be logged at WARN or ERROR level and ignored. | ExceptionHandler | ||
Sets the exchange pattern when the consumer creates an exchange. Enum values:
| ExchangePattern | ||
A pluggable org.apache.camel.PollingConsumerPollingStrategy allowing you to provide your custom implementation to control error handling usually occurred during the poll operation before an Exchange have been created and being routed in Camel. | PollingConsumerPollStrategy | ||
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 | ||
The number of subsequent error polls (failed due some error) that should happen before the backoffMultipler should kick-in. | int | ||
The number of subsequent idle polls that should happen before the backoffMultipler should kick-in. | int | ||
To let the scheduled polling consumer backoff if there has been a number of subsequent idles/errors in a row. The multiplier is then the number of polls that will be skipped before the next actual attempt is happening again. When this option is in use then backoffIdleThreshold and/or backoffErrorThreshold must also be configured. | int | ||
Milliseconds before the next poll. | 500 | long | |
If greedy is enabled, then the ScheduledPollConsumer will run immediately again, if the previous run polled 1 or more messages. | false | boolean | |
Milliseconds before the first poll starts. | 1000 | long | |
Specifies a maximum limit of number of fires. So if you set it to 1, the scheduler will only fire once. If you set it to 5, it will only fire five times. A value of zero or negative means fire forever. | 0 | long | |
The consumer logs a start/complete log line when it polls. This option allows you to configure the logging level for that. Enum values:
| TRACE | LoggingLevel | |
Allows for configuring a custom/shared thread pool to use for the consumer. By default each consumer has its own single threaded thread pool. | ScheduledExecutorService | ||
To use a cron scheduler from either camel-spring or camel-quartz component. Use value spring or quartz for built in scheduler. | none | Object | |
To configure additional properties when using a custom scheduler or any of the Quartz, Spring based scheduler. | Map | ||
Whether the scheduler should be auto started. | true | boolean | |
Time unit for initialDelay and delay options. Enum values:
| MILLISECONDS | TimeUnit | |
Controls if fixed delay or fixed rate is used. See ScheduledExecutorService in JDK for details. | true | boolean | |
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.