How to scrape names from Whatsapp Web

[HaniN]

Hi, I'm trying to scrape the names of people who send me messages on Whatsapp Web and use it in another app. Basically, I want to click on a name on Whatsapp Web and Autoit must copy that person's name onto the clipboard and paste it into another app.

I saw a couple of Autoit tutorials and thought I would try loading the content of the web page using BinarytoString (InetRead('Htt/s://web.whatsapp.com/", and then figure out a way to load the person's name when it's clicked. However the InetRead only reads the Whatsapp landing page (the page you get before you log in) which isn't very useful, so I've given up on that idea. I suppose you can click on the person's name, then click on his name that appears on top of the page to get their contact info profile, then click on their name in their contact profile and copy it using screen addresses and mouse clicks instructions etc, but isn't there a better, more efficient way to do this? I'd appreciate any help.

 

[Luke94]

Have a look at junkew's IUIAutomation UDF or Danp2's WebDriver UDF.

[HaniN]

Hi Luke,

Could you give me a little more detail about which part of the WebDriver UDF and UIAutomation UDF I must look at? I don't have enough experience to understand most of what I read there and the documents are pretty long. Was I on the right track about reading the content of the WhatsApp webpage into memory and then trying to parse the names out of the code? If yes, how do I read the content of the Whatsapp page into memory? The InetRead ('www.web.whatsapp.com/") method didn't work.

[junkew]

Understand the first examples of uia thread with Chrome or other browser. You have to study before you will be able to have interaction with your browser.

 

[mLipok]

On 1/12/2022 at 2:31 PM, HaniN said:

Could you give me a little more detail about which part of the WebDriver UDF and UIAutomation UDF I must look at?

Each UDF ... all from start to end + all examples.

Or one UDF .....

[SOLVE-SMART]

Hi HaniN,

maybe this small how to and pseudo code will help you if you want to try the WebDriver approach.

----------------------------------

1. Requirements to use WebDriver => Danp2 > WebDriver > Requirements

Downloads (all linked)

• Download the wd_*.au3 files
• chromedriver.exe
• Json UDF and WinHttp UDF
• Possibly you also need BinaryCall.au3 and WinHttpConstants.au3

2. Include wd_core.au3 and wd_helper.au3
3. Initialize the WebDriver (in this case Chrome)

_setupChromeDriver()
_startChromeDriverSession()

4. Navigate to web.whatsapp.com

_navigateTo($sBaseUrl)

5. Sync WhatsApp, your smartphone version with the web version by the QR code

_waitUntilManualQrCodeIsEntered()

6. Do your click actions by XPath selectors or CSS selectors to reach the contact information

Basically something like:

Func _findElement($sSelector)
    Return _WD_FindElement($sSession, $_WD_LOCATOR_ByXPath, $sSelector)
EndFunc

Func _findElements($sSelector)
    Return _WD_FindElement($sSession, $_WD_LOCATOR_ByXPath, $sSelector, Default, True)
EndFunc

Func _clickElement($sElement)
    _WD_ElementAction($sSession, $sElement, 'click')
EndFunc

7. Store your information to an variable

Func _getElementText($sElement)
    Return _WD_ElementAction($sSession, $sElement, 'text')
EndFunc

8. Copy to clipboard, your string or array variable content
9. Notify your other program which receives the "new" expected clipboard content
10. Do steps 6 to 9 in a loop, of course with more detailed sub steps, as long as you want to
11. Close/Quit webdriver

Func _teardownChromeDriver()
    _WD_DeleteSession($sSession)
    _WD_Shutdown()
EndFunc

----------------------------------

More information about the whole WebDriver usage is also provided as Danp2 > WebDriver > wd_demo.au3 .
I hope you can use it as a starting point.

By the way @Danp2 and @mLipok : Thanks for your work on this project, that's really awesome and helpful ❤️ .

Best regards
Sven

________________
Stay innovative!

 

Edited January 24, 2022 by SOLVE-SMART