Send a link to whatsapp group directly from browser (or from app)

Question

I want to enable users to share a URL+ text with a WhatsApp group. I want this to work both from iPhones and Androids. However my app is in a browser (it's a website). I'm currently looking into 2 options, but both have issues:

1) The first potential solution - sharing directly from the browser.

I checked out WhatsApp's URL schema and used the following URL to share through my app:

"whatsapp://send?text=Hello%2C%20World!" 

However there were several problems with this approach:

• It seems to work only with iPhones and not with Androids. Is there a comparable solution somewhere for Androids?
• It enables to choose who to send to only after you are redirected to WhatsApp, unless you know the address book ID (=abid) of the user. First, I do not know how to access the abid of users? Second, I am trying to send to a group, in which case there is no abid (right?), and therefore it seems impossible to do this. Is that true? Also, what happens for Android apps? What is the comparable to the abid, for a group, and how do I get it?

2) The second potential solution - creating a native app which is identical with the browser-based app, but this specific part (where we do the "sharing") is native.

However, it seems to me that in this case I have very similar problems to the ones described above:

• I can see how to do this for iOS on WhatsApp's website (see the link above). However, does the WhatsApp URL schema work with Android native apps as well?
• Again, the address book ID issue is the same. How do I get it? It may be easier to get the abid on iOS given that we are now a native app, but does it exist for a group? And how about the Android app? Would this share to WhatsApp group work there?

Answer 1

Sharing directly from the browser works both in iPhone and Android if you use WhatsApp version 2.11 or higher. As you said it DIDN'T USED TO work in Android.

U can use the same URL

"whatsapp://send?text=Hello%2C%20World!" 

Knowing abid is not possible as far as I know.

Hope this was helpful.

Thank You.

Answer 2

in Android you can invite friends from an app using Intent, see the following Code

final ComponentName name = new ComponentName("com.whatsapp", "com.whatsapp.ContactPicker");
Intent oShareIntent = new Intent();
oShareIntent.setComponent(name);
oShareIntent.setType("text/plain");
oShareIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "Your Message");
startActivity(oShareIntent);

I hope this solves your problem