Build a WeChat Chatbot with Wechaty: Step‑by‑Step Node.js Guide

Background

It is well known that sending robot messages in DingTalk groups is easy, but in WeChat it is difficult because WeChat does not support it natively. However, a WeChat chat robot can be built using tools; this article introduces using Wechaty to implement a WeChat chatbot.

Wechaty is an open‑source chatbot project that provides an SDK for quickly developing chatbots. Through Wechaty you can obtain chat content, contacts, groups, friend relationships, and also create groups and send messages.

Implementation

Wechaty adds a layer of abstraction over WeChat, providing APIs that make it easy to implement a chatbot. Before writing code, install the following npm packages:

wechaty

wechaty-puppet-wechat

(uses the web version of WeChat)

qrcode-terminal

(displays QR code in the console)

First, create a chatbot. Wechaty launches a Puppeteer instance and opens the web version of WeChat; scan the QR code displayed by Wechaty with the mobile WeChat app to log in. After a successful login, various operations can be performed via Wechaty.

<code>const qrTerm = require('qrcode-terminal');
const Wechaty = require('wechaty');

const { ScanStatus, WechatyBuilder, log } = Wechaty;

function onScan (qrcode, status) {
  if (status === ScanStatus.Waiting || status === ScanStatus.Timeout) {
    qrTerm.generate(qrcode, { small: true }); // show qrcode on console

    const qrcodeImageUrl = [
      'https://wechaty.js.org/qrcode/',
      encodeURIComponent(qrcode),
    ].join('');

    log.info('StarterBot', 'onScan: %s(%s) - %s', ScanStatus[status], status, qrcodeImageUrl);
  } else {
    log.info('StarterBot', 'onScan: %s(%s)', ScanStatus[status], status);
  }
}

// get a Wechaty instance
const bot = WechatyBuilder.build({
  name: 'wechat-bot',
  puppet: 'wechaty-puppet-wechat',
})

// emit when the bot needs to show you a QR Code for scanning
bot.on('scan', onScan);

// start the bot
bot.start()
  .then(() => log.info('StarterBot', 'Starter Bot Started.'))
  .catch(e => log.error('StarterBot', e));
</code>

Then implement message sending. After the chatbot starts successfully, you can send messages with the bot as follows:

<code>// find a room
const room = await bot.Room.find({ topic: 'yours-wechat-group-name' })
if (room) {
  // send a message
  await room.say(`hello world`)
}
</code>

Using Wechaty to build a WeChat chatbot is convenient, but note two points:

Wechaty requires Node.js version 16 or higher; lower versions will cause errors.

If npm package downloads are slow, you can set the following mirrors:

<code>npm config set puppeteer_download_host "https://npm.taobao.org/mirrors"
npm config set sharp_binary_host "https://npm.taobao.org/mirrors/sharp"
npm config set sharp_libvips_binary_host "https://npm.taobao.org/mirrors/sharp-libvips"
</code>

Summary

As private‑domain traffic becomes more familiar, personal‑WeChat community management tools have broad use cases; Webchaty provides a solution that makes implementing related business functions easier.