Twilio is a cloud communication platform that enables developers to build, deploy, and manage communication applications.
With Twilio, developers can send and receive SMS, MMS, voice calls, and video calls.
Twilio also supports WhatsApp messaging, making it possible to send and receive messages on WhatsApp through the Twilio API.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how to send a WhatsApp message to a group using Twilio.
Table of Contents
Getting Started with Twilio and WhatsApp:
To get started with Twilio and WhatsApp, you need to have a Twilio account and a Twilio phone number.
You also need to have a WhatsApp Business account and get your Twilio number approved for WhatsApp by following the instructions on the Twilio website.
Setting up Group Messaging: Once you have your Twilio account and phone number set up, you need to set up group messaging in the Twilio Console.
To do this, navigate to the WhatsApp Sandbox in the Twilio Console, and follow the instructions to set up a group. You can add participants to the group by providing their phone numbers.
Sending a Message to a Group: Once you have set up a group, you can send a message to the group by using the Twilio API.
To send a message to a group, you need to make a POST request to the Twilio API with the necessary parameters.
The parameters include the Twilio account SID, the Twilio Auth Token, the Twilio phone number, the group name, and the message text.
Started with Twilio and WhatsApp Code:
Here is an example of a Python code to send a message to a group:
import requests
# Your Account SID and Auth Token from twilio.com/console
account_sid = ‘ACXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX’
auth_token = ‘your_auth_token’
# Your Twilio phone number
from_whatsapp_number = ‘whatsapp:+14155238886’
# The group name
group_name = ‘Your Group Name’
# The message text
message_text = ‘Hello from Twilio!’
# Make the request to the Twilio API
response = requests.post(
‘https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/{}/Messages.json’.format(account_sid),
auth=(account_sid, auth_token),
data={
‘From’: from_whatsapp_number,
‘To’: group_name,
‘Body’: message_text
}
)
# Check the response
print(response.text)
Receiving Messages from a Group: In addition to sending messages to a group, you can also receive messages from a group using Twilio.
Twilio and WhatsApp Start Code:
To receive messages, you need to set up a webhook that will receive incoming messages and process them.
You can set up a webhook in the Twilio Console by navigating to the WhatsApp Sandbox and following the instructions.
Here is an example of a Flask code to receive messages from a group:
from flask import Flask, request from twilio.twiml.messaging_response import MessagingResponse app = Flask(__name__) def hello():
