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Incorporating WhatsApp messaging capabilities into web applications has become increasingly valuable for interactive user communication. Gupshup, a prominent messaging API provider, offers seamless integration with WhatsApp, enabling developers to send messages programmatically.

Leveraging Gupshup API within Laravel, a robust PHP framework, facilitates the delivery of WhatsApp messages with ease. In this tutorial, we’ll see the process of integrating the Gupshup API to send WhatsApp messages in Laravel.

Let’s get started.

Laravel Installation

We will create laravel project using composer. So, please make sure your system should have composer installed. If not, may be this article will help you to Install composer in system.

Here is the command to create a laravel project-

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel blog

To start the development server of Laravel –

php artisan serve

URL: http://127.0.0.1:8000

Assuming laravel already installed inside your system.

Gupshup API & Template Settings

Here, you will see settings of Template setup inside your gupshup dashboard.

Gupshup business template is the way to bind your messages in placeholders to send your customers.

>> Login to Gupshup Account

After login, Click on Channels >> WhatsApp

>> Create New Template

Next, click on Create Template button to create your own layout for message with placeholders.

Template Example,

Once you create your template then you can use it but the template should be Approved by WhatsApp. After template submission generally it takes 24 hours to review and approve by WhatsApp.

>> Required API Parameters

To send messages by Gupshup, you need following parameters,

GupShup API URL
API Key
Template ID
App Name
Source Number

Let’s setup these details into application.

Setup GupShup Parameters to Application

Open .env file and setup your environment variables like this,

WHATSAPP_GUPSHUP_API_URL="https://api.gupshup.io/wa/api/v1/template/msg"

WHATSAPP_GUPSHUP_API_KEY="xxx-yyy-zzz"

WHATSAPP_GUPSHUP_TEMPLATE_ID="aaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeee"

GUPSHUP_APP_NAME="PQRSABCD1234..."

WHATSAPP_GUPSHUP_SOURCE_NUMBER="91xxxyyyzzzz"

Now, you can use this variable globally in your application.

Message Controller Setup and Settings

Open project terminal and run this command,

php artisan make:controller MessageController

It will create MessageController.php inside /app/Controllers folder.

Open file and write this complete code into it,

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class MessageController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        // Setup parameters
        $mobile = "918888888888"; // Country code 91 and then number
        $data = [
            "name" => "Sanjay",
            "message" => "Sample message to test with this template",
            "files" => [
                "http://example.com/.....",
                //...
            ]
        ];

        if($this->send_whatsapp_message($mobile, $data)){

            // Message sent
        }else{

            // Failed to sent message
        }
    }

    // Send message 
    public function send_whatsapp_message($mobile_number, $data = array()){

		$url = WHATSAPP_GUPSHUP_API_URL;

		// Attach files in new lines
		if(isset($data["files"]) && count($data["files"]) > 0){

			$data["files"] = implode(" ", $data["files"]);
		}else{

			$data["files"] = "--";
		}

		$data = [
			'channel' => 'whatsapp',
			'source' => WHATSAPP_GUPSHUP_SOURCE_NUMBER,
			'destination' => $mobile_number,
			'src.name' => GUPSHUP_APP_NAME,
			'template' => json_encode([
				'id' => WHATSAPP_GUPSHUP_TEMPLATE_ID,
				'params' => [
					$data["name"], 
					$data["message"],
					$data["files"],
				]
			])
		];

		$headers = [
			'apikey: '. WHATSAPP_GUPSHUP_API_KEY,
			'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
			'Cache-Control: no-cache'
		];

		$ch = curl_init($url);

		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, http_build_query($data));
		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

		$response = curl_exec($ch);
		curl_close($ch);

		// {"status":"submitted","messageId":"fed16964-104b-4b54-a9a1-ba37fd7e8a76"}
		$response = json_decode($response, true);

		if($response['status'] == "submitted"){
			return true;
		}else{
			return false;
		}
	}
}

Next,

When you run this you will get whatsapp message to your destination number.

Example Output,

That’s it.

We hope this article helped you to learn about Laravel with Gupshup API Send WhatsApp Message Tutorial in a very detailed way.

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