[askthrowaway]

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]

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-starte...

[est31]

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

> 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/

> 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.

[Carpetsmoker]

> 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.