// the find
chrishubert/whatsapp-api
This project is a REST API wrapper for the whatsapp-web.js library, providing an easy-to-use interface to interact with the WhatsApp Web platform.
A REST API wrapper around whatsapp-web.js that lets non-Node projects interact with WhatsApp Web via HTTP endpoints and webhooks. Supports multiple sessions, message types, group management, and media. Deprecated as of the repo's own README — the maintained fork is avoylenko/wwebjs-api.
- Docker-first setup with docker-compose means you can have it running in under 5 minutes without touching Node tooling
- Swagger/OpenAPI spec included and servable locally, so you get interactive docs without any extra tooling
- Multi-session support with session persistence across restarts, identified by arbitrary string IDs — useful for SaaS-style multi-tenant use
- API key auth and per-session webhook URL overrides are both present, which are the two things you'd immediately need in any real deployment
- Deprecated and unmaintained — the README itself tells you to go elsewhere, so adopting this for anything new is a bad idea regardless of how it looks
- Built on whatsapp-web.js which scrapes WhatsApp Web via Puppeteer/Chromium; WhatsApp actively bans unofficial clients and this can and does get accounts banned with no recourse
- No persistent storage beyond local filesystem — session data is saved to disk with no built-in support for S3, Redis, or any external store, making horizontal scaling painful despite the README claiming it's scalable
- Single test file (tests/api.test.js) covering a thin slice of functionality; the test suite won't catch regressions in most of the controller logic