Sending message to WhatsApp from your app using Swift?

Question

For one of my app, I wanted to share data to WhatsApp contacts. I tried few solutions overs the StackOverflow but couldn't get exact solution. After some trials could achieve what I was looking for, so sharing here for anyone's future reference.

Answer 1

 var url  = NSURL(string: "whatsapp://send?text=Hello%20Friends%2C%20Sharing%20some%20data%20here...%20!")

//Text which will be shared on WhatsApp is: "Hello Friends, Sharing some data here... !"

    if UIApplication.sharedApplication().canOpenURL(url!) {
        UIApplication.sharedApplication().open(url as URL, options: [:]) { (success) in
                if success {
                    print("WhatsApp accessed successfully")
                } else {
                    print("Error accessing WhatsApp")
                }
            }
    }

Note: text needs to be URL encoded. You can get it using any of the open source tools over internet or using addingPercentEncoding(withAllowedCharacters:) function in iOS. e.g.

var urlString = "Hello Friends, Sharing some data here... !"
var urlStringEncoded = urlString.addingPercentEncoding(withAllowedCharacters: NSCharacterSet.urlQueryAllowed)
var url  = NSURL(string: "whatsapp://send?text=\(urlStringEncoded!)")