Get a profile picture of a chat or user

Explore this if you need to know about contact and chat avatars

Get a contact image or chat/group picture

Very often developers and businesses need to retrieve details about a contact, including a profile image. It is quite easy to do it via API. To get chat or profile images in requests such as Get Chats, Get Contacts, Get Messages, Get communities, you need to enable the init_avatars setting in the channel and re-authorize.

curl --request PATCH \
     --url https://gate.whapi.cloud/settings \
     --header 'accept: application/json' \
     --header 'authorization: Bearer {your_token}' \
     --header 'content-type: application/json' \
     --data '
{
  "media": {
    "init_avatars": true
  }
}
'

Setting init_avatars: true allows you to get chat avatars after channel authorization. Thus, you will need to reconnect to the channel again. Or set this setting before connecting. This setting requires only one-time activation and the channel remembers this setting.

Update channel settingsWhapi Cloud - Whatsapp API for developers

Endpoint to change channel settings

Why is it done this way?

The fact is that uploading contacts and handling profile pictures for WhatsApp is a massive activity, as you are actively getting to know many contacts in a short period of time. To reduce the risks for new fresh numbers, we decided to introduce this setting.

This way, you will be out of risk when you connect. However, if your number is already stable with the API, you can safely automatically get profile images of all contacts and chats using this setting.

How to get a profile pic if the user is not in your Contacts List

The previous setting is only relevant for chats that are present in your app. However, you can also get this information about any contact outside of your phonebook and without corresponding with them. The cell phone user is not made aware of this!

curl --request GET \
     --url https://gate.whapi.cloud/contacts/919984351847/profile \
     --header 'accept: application/json' \
     --header 'authorization: Bearer {your_token}'

Get profileWhapi Cloud - Whatsapp API for developers

This method allows you to get profile information (description, profile image) by phone number, even if it is not in your contact list

WhatsApp Profile Picture Retriever Script

This script allows users to bulk retrieve WhatsApp profile pictures by phone numbers. It leverages the Whapi.Cloud API to automate WhatsApp interactions. After connecting your phone to the API and obtaining a token, you can use the script to download profile pictures by providing a list of phone numbers in a CSV file.

GitHub - Whapi-Cloud/whatsapp-get-profile-pictures: WhatsApp Profile Picture API. A simple tool to fetch and download WhatsApp profile pictures by phone numberGitHub

Source code for scraper

For more information and instructions, click here.