README.rst

itchat

itchat is an open source api for WeChat, a commonly-used Chinese social networking app.

Accessing your personal wechat account through itchat in python has never been easier.

A wechat robot can handle all the basic messages with only less than 30 lines of codes.

And it's similiar to itchatmp (api for wechat massive platform), learn once and get two tools.

Now Wechat is an important part of personal life, hopefully this repo can help you extend your personal wechat account's functionality and enbetter user's experience with wechat.

Installation

pip install itchat

Simple uses

With itchat, if you want to send a message to filehelper, this is how:

import itchat

itchat.auto_login()

itchat.send('Hello, filehelper', toUserName='filehelper')

And you only need to write this to reply personal text messages.

import itchat

@itchat.msg_register(itchat.content.TEXT)
def text_reply(msg):
    return msg.text

itchat.auto_login()
itchat.run()

For more advanced uses you may continue on reading or browse the document.

Try

You may have a try of the robot based on this project first:

Here is the code.

Advanced uses

Special usage of message dictionary

You may find out that all the users and messages of itchat are dictionaries by printing them out onto the screen.

But actually they are useful classes itchat created.

They have useful keys and useful interfaces, like:

@itchat.msg_register(TEXT)
def _(msg):
    # equals to print(msg['FromUserName'])
    print(msg.fromUserName)

And like:

author = itchat.search_friends(nickName='LittleCoder')[0]
author.send('greeting, littlecoder!')

Message register of various types

The following is a demo of how itchat is configured to fetch and reply daily information.

import itchat, time
from itchat.content import *

@itchat.msg_register([TEXT, MAP, CARD, NOTE, SHARING])
def text_reply(msg):
    msg.user.send('%s: %s' % (msg.type, msg.text))

@itchat.msg_register([PICTURE, RECORDING, ATTACHMENT, VIDEO])
def download_files(msg):
    msg.download(msg.fileName)
    typeSymbol = {
        PICTURE: 'img',
        VIDEO: 'vid', }.get(msg.type, 'fil')
    return '@%s@%s' % (typeSymbol, msg.fileName)

@itchat.msg_register(FRIENDS)
def add_friend(msg):
    msg.user.verify()
    msg.user.send('Nice to meet you!')

@itchat.msg_register(TEXT, isGroupChat=True)
def text_reply(msg):
    if msg.isAt:
        msg.user.send(u'@%s\u2005I received: %s' % (
            msg.actualNickName, msg.text))

itchat.auto_login(True)
itchat.run(True)

Command line QR Code

You can access the QR Code in command line through using this command:

itchat.auto_login(enableCmdQR=True)

Because of width of some character differs from systems, you may adjust the enableCmdQR to fix the problem.

# for some linux system, width of block character is one instead of two, so enableCmdQR should be 2
itchat.auto_login(enableCmdQR=2)

Default background color of command line is dark (black), if it's not, you may set enableCmdQR to be negative:

itchat.auto_login(enableCmdQR=-1)

Hot reload

By using the following command, you may reload the program without re-scan QRCode in some time.

itchat.auto_login(hotReload=True)

User search

By using search_friends, you have four ways to search a user:

1. Get your own user information
2. Get user information through UserName
3. Get user information whose remark name or wechat account or nickname matches name key of the function
4. Get user information whose remark name, wechat account and nickname match what are given to the function

Way 3, 4 can be used together, the following is the demo program:

# get your own user information
itchat.search_friends()
# get user information of specific username
itchat.search_friends(userName='@abcdefg1234567')
# get user information of function 3
itchat.search_friends(name='littlecodersh')
# get user information of function 4
itchat.search_friends(wechatAccount='littlecodersh')
# combination of way 3, 4
itchat.search_friends(name='LittleCoder机器人', wechatAccount='littlecodersh')

There are detailed information about searching and getting of massive platforms and chatrooms in document.

Download and send attachments

The attachment download function of itchat is in Text key of msg

Name of the file (default name of picture) is in FileName key of msg

Download function accept one location value (include the file name) and store attachment accordingly.

@itchat.msg_register([PICTURE, RECORDING, ATTACHMENT, VIDEO])
def download_files(msg):
    msg.download(msg.fileName)
    itchat.send('@%s@%s' % (
        'img' if msg['Type'] == 'Picture' else 'fil', msg['FileName']),
        msg['FromUserName'])
    return '%s received' % msg['Type']

If you don't want a local copy of the picture, you may pass nothing to the function to get a binary string.

@itchat.msg_register([PICTURE, RECORDING, ATTACHMENT, VIDEO])
def download_files(msg):
    with open(msg.fileName, 'wb') as f:
        f.write(msg.download())

Multi instance

You may use the following commands to open multi instance.

import itchat

newInstance = itchat.new_instance()
newInstance.auto_login(hotReload=True, statusStorageDir='newInstance.pkl')

@newInstance.msg_register(itchat.content.TEXT)
def reply(msg):
    return msg['Text']

newInstance.run()

Set callback after login and logout

Callback of login and logout are set through loginCallback and exitCallback.

import time

import itchat

def lc():
    print('finish login')
def ec():
    print('exit')

itchat.auto_login(loginCallback=lc, exitCallback=ec)
time.sleep(3)
itchat.logout()

If loginCallback is not set, qr picture will be deleted and cmd will be cleared.

If you exit through phone, exitCallback will also be called.

FAQ

Q: Why I can't send files whose name is encoded in utf8?

A: That's because of the upload setting of requests, you can put this file (for py3 you need this) into packages/urllib3 of requests package.

Q: How to use this package to use my wechat as an monitor?

A: There are two ways: communicate with your own account or with filehelper.

Q: Why sometimes I can't send messages?

A: Some account simply can't send messages to yourself, so use filehelper instead.

Comments

If you have any problems or suggestions, you can talk to me in this issue

Or on gitter.