Wechaty Puppet Providers

The Wechaty community builds separate RPA modules for different instant messaging (IM) systems (such as WeChat, Whatsapp, and TikTok). These modules are called Wechaty Puppet.

The Wechaty Puppet Provider which is supporting WeChat is named wechaty-puppet-wechat. The puppet provider supporting Whatsapp is named wechaty-puppet-whatsapp, and supporting Lark is named wechaty-puppet-lark.

Wechaty Puppet Provider is an NPM module for a specific IM protocol Wechaty Puppet. Run specific Wechaty puppet using the following command :

npm install wechaty-puppet-NAME
export WECHATY_PUPPET=wechaty-puppet-NAME
npm start

You can switch between different Wechaty Puppet Provider by changing your WECHATY_PUPPET environment variable. All your source code should work between different tokens without any changes.

Wechaty Puppet Providers

Presently, we have the following Wechaty Puppet Providers:

Name	Platform	Protocol	Stable
WeChat	WeChat	Web	Beta
Whatsapp	Whatsapp	Web	Alpha
Official Account	WeChat Official Account	API	Alpha
Gitter	Gitter	API	Alpha
Lark	Lark	API	Alpha
PadLocal	WeChat	Pad	Beta
WeChat4U	WeChat	Web	Alpha
XP	WeChat	Windows	Alpha
Service	Universal	gRPC	Beta
Mock	Universal	Mock	Beta

Using Wechaty Puppet Providers

Let’s see a code example (in TypeScript) of how to change Wechaty Puppet Providers.

We have the following six lines code, which is the world’s shortest chatbot:

// bot.ts
import { Wechaty } from 'wechaty'

Wechaty.instance() // Global Instance
.on('scan', (qrcode, status) => console.log(`Scan QR Code to login: ${status}\nhttps://wechaty.js.org/qrcode/${encodeURIComponent(qrcode)}`))
.on('login',            user => console.log(`User ${user} logged in`))
.on('message',       message => console.log(`Message: ${message}`))
.start()

The above code will use the default Wechaty Puppet Provider (which is wechaty-puppet-wechat) because we have not specified manually.

If we want this bot to serve on Whatsapp, we need to specify a Wechaty Puppet Provider for Whatsapp.

We have two methods to specify Wechaty Puppet Providers for our program:

1. Using the WECHATY_PUPPET environment variable.
2. Import the Wechaty Puppet manually in code.

Using the WECHATY_PUPPET environment variable

The WECHATY_PUPPET environment will be used as the Wechaty Puppet Provider NPM name, and then you are all set.

export WECHATY_PUPPET=wechaty-puppet-whatsapp
ts-node bot.ts

The above shell commands set the wechaty-puppet-whatsapp to the environment variable WECHATY_PUPPET and our Wechaty system will use it.

Importing the Wechaty Puppet manually in code

On the other hand, you can import the Wechaty Puppet Provider NPM module directly in your code and then add an option when instantiating the Wechaty with the object name puppet:

// bot.ts
import { Wechaty } from 'wechaty'
+ import { PuppetWhatsapp } from 'wechaty-puppet-whatsapp'

- Wechaty.instance() // Global Instance
+ Wechaty.instance({ puppet: new PuppetWhatsapp() })
.on('scan', (qrcode, status) => console.log(`Scan QR Code to login: ${status}\nhttps://wechaty.js.org/qrcode/${encodeURIComponent(qrcode)}`))
.on('login',            user => console.log(`User ${user} logged in`))
.on('message',       message => console.log(`Message: ${message}`))
.start()

In the above code, Wechaty will use PuppetWhatsapp from the wechaty-puppet-whatsapp module.

History

1. Wechaty Puppet Providers Trends, Huan, Mar 4, 2021
2. Introducing Wechaty Puppet Service (Providers), @huan, Jan 14, 2021

See Also

If you want to learn more about the concepts behind Wechaty Puppet Provider, you can read:

1. Wechaty Puppet Specification
2. Introducing Wechaty Puppet Service (Providers), @huan, Jan 14, 2021

For a deeper understanding of the Puppet in Wechaty, you can read its source code from https://github.com/wechaty/wechaty-puppet/blob/main/src/puppet.ts

Blogs

1. Introducing Wechaty Puppet Service (Providers), @huan, Jan 14, 2021