Better way to automatize task on WhatsApp Web over Raspberry Pi

Question

I want to automatize some tasks on WhatsApp Web using Python and Selenium over my Raspberry Pi 3B+ and I'm having difficulties to find a web browser that's compatible with all these requirements.

• I tried Chromium but WhatsApp Web doesn't work and the page directs to other modern browsers (I tried this);
• I tried Firefox, but geckodriver (the webdriver of Firefox) does not have an updated Arm7 driver (most recent is V 0.23 and does not work on the most recent Firefox version required by WhatsApp Web);
• And finally I read about Chrome, which is not compatible with Raspberry Pi.

I am lost and don't know what to do.

Answer 1

I have WhatsApp Web working on Rasp Pi. I use Chromium and the ChromiumDriver.

First install the Chromium Browser and WebDriver. Copy the below in your Terminal.

sudo apt-get install chromium-chromedriver

Here is my Python code:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
import time
options = Options()
options.add_argument("--user-data-dir=chrome-data") #this is needed to stop WhatsApp asking for QR code verification after your first time
options.add_experimental_option("excludeSwitches", ["enable-automation"])
options.add_experimental_option('useAutomationExtension', False)
driver = webdriver.Chrome('/usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromedriver', options=options)
driver.maximize_window()
driver.get('https://web.whatsapp.com')
time.sleep(10)
driver.find_element_by_xpath("//[@title='REMOVED']").click() #change Removed to the number of group you are sending a message to
driver.find_element_by_xpath('//[@id="main"]/footer/div[1]/div[2]/div/div[2]').send_keys('MESSAGE HERE')
driver.find_element_by_xpath('//*[@id="main"]/footer/div[1]/div[3]/button/span').click()
time.sleep(5)

I have only found one error and forward slashes will not send. Here is my Stack Overflow post about it. I found your post while trying to resolve my error.

Please note I am on a Raspberry 4 and I'm not 100% sure if it will work on Raspberry 3.