matrix-appservice-wechaty

Wechat (微信) Matrix Application Service Bridge

Image credit: Gnosis

What is [Matrix]

Matrix is an open network for secure, decentralized communication, which can be used similarly to Pidgin on your phone.

Pidgin tries to have all your friends in one place in Linux, regardless of what IM they use. With Matrix you can have your phone client connected to your private server which can all be highly customized. Matrix does not use the XMPP protocol, it uses a REST API so that it could be easier to extend.

The [Matrix] client Element is a universal secure chat app entirely under your control. It supports desktop (Windows, Mac and Linux) and mobile (Android and iOS)

What is matrix-appservice-wechaty

matrix-appservice-wechaty is a WeChat (微信) Matrix AppService for bridging your WeChat groups to Matrix rooms.

It has been officially listed at [Matrix] Bridge Page for Wechaty.

According to Types of Bridging, the Matrix Wechaty Bot implements a Simple Puppeted Bridge with Portal Rooms because we want to bring all conversations from WeChat to Matrix, and let the Matrix user control his account on Wechat.

Features

1. Supports connecting to Wechat via the Web/iPad/Hostie/Windows/Mac WeChat protocols, with the power of Wechaty
2. Maps all Wechat users/room/official accounts to Matrix virtual users

Requirements

1. A Matrix homeserver that supports application services (e.g. Synapse)
2. Node.js wit NPM, or Docker

Installation

sudo npm install -g matrix-appservice-wechaty

matrix-appservcie-wechaty is all you need.

1 Configure config.yaml

Copy config/config.sample.yaml to config.yaml and update it to match your setup.

1. domain needs to change to your domain name, which should point to your homeserver.
2. homeserverUrl needs to change to your homeserver url, with the port number included.
3. registration needs to change to your registration yaml file name (see next part for how to generate it)

2 Generate wechaty-registration.yaml

After we setup the config.yaml, then we can generate the wechaty-registration.yaml file for registering the appservice to the homeserver:

export APP_SERVICE_ENDPOINT='http://localhost:8788'

matrix-appservice-wechaty \
  --config  config.yaml \
  --url     "$APP_SERVICE_ENDPOINT" \
  --generate-registration

Note: The URL APP_SERVICE_ENDPIOINT is used by the home server to communicate with the appservice, in this example is: http://localhost:8788. If you have other appservices, or other requirements, pick an appropriate hostname and port.

3 Register the App Service

Edit your homeserver.yaml file and update the app_service_config_files entry with the path to the wechaty-registration.yaml file.

app_service_config_files: ["/data/wechaty-registration.yaml"]

4 Restart Home Server (Synapse)

You will then need to restart the synapse server.

For docker users:

export SYNAPSE_CONTAINER_ID=$(docker ps | grep synapse | awk '{print $1}')
docker restart $SYNAPSE_CONTAINER_ID

Or if you are not using docker:

synctl restart

Remember to restart it every time the registration file is updated.

Launch the Wechaty AppService Bridge

Let's start the matrix-appservice-wechaty bridge, with the port specified in wechaty-registration.yaml (8788 in the above example)

export WECHATY_PUPPET=wechaty-puppet-padplus
export WECHATY_PUPPET_PADPLUS_TOKEN=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

matrix-appservice-wechaty \
  --config  config.yaml \
  --file    wechaty-registration.yaml

Note: Wechaty is a very powerful framework that supporting Web, iPad, Win32, Mac, iOS protocols of WeChat. Learn more about WeChaty protocols at our Wechaty Puppet Directory, and you can apply for a token for using wechaty-puppet-padplus at our Support Developers Program

The bridge should start working shortly afterwards.

The current path ($(pwd)) should have the wechaty-registration.yaml file and config.yaml file. Additional bridge-related data will be stored here.

Examples

Example wechaty-registration.yaml

id: wechaty
hs_token: 4f2763d5cc6e931967ec89efdde1123772945184b4cbe99e8fa9538122015e92
as_token: c27815bdd699d2eaefb499c83f99ce1a7983a9688811269fbcc17b632b0b250e
namespaces:
  users:
    - exclusive: true
      regex: '@wechaty_.*'
  aliases:
    - exclusive: true
      regex: '#wechaty_.*'
  rooms: []
url: matrix.chatie.io:8788
sender_localpart: wechaty
rate_limited: false
protocols:
  - wechaty

Example config.yaml

domain: chatie.io
homeserverUrl: https://matrix.chatie.io
registration: wechaty-registration.yaml

Example Docker Compose File

We have published a docker image wechaty/matrix-appservice for your convenience.

You can use docker to run matrix-appservice-wechaty bridge by adding the following configs to your docker-compose.yml

matrix-appservice-wechaty:
  container_name: matrix-appservice-wechaty
  image: wechaty/matrix-appservice
  volumes:
  - ./bridges/matrix-appservice-wechaty:/data
  networks:
  - default
  environment:
  - WECHATY_PUPPET_PADPLUS_TOKEN=puppet_padplus_<token>
  - WECHATY_PUPPET=wechaty-puppet-padplus
  command: ["--config", "/data/config.yaml", "--file", "/data/wechaty-registration.yaml", "--port", "8788"]

Bridge Usage

1. Direct Message Wechaty Bot (@wechaty:your.domain.ltd)
2. Send the message !login (three times... wip... )
3. The wechaty app service bot will then send you a QR Code for scanning on WeChat.

After you have scanned the QR Code and confirmed it on your phone, everything will be setup automatically by the wechaty bot.

Authentication

Logging in

1. Start a chat with the bridge bot. The bot should say "This room has been registered as your bridge management/status room." if you started the chat correctly.
2. Run !login
3. Log in by scanning the QR code. If the code expires before you scan it, the bridge will send an error to notify you.
   1. Open Wechat on your phone.
   2. Tap Menu or Settings and select Scan.
   3. Point your phone at the image sent by the bot to capture the code.
4. Finally, the bot should inform you of a successful login and the bridge should start creating portal rooms for all your Wechat groups and private chats.

Logging out

Simply run the !logout management command.

Setup Your Matrix Server

By following the guide from @spantaleev, you can set your matrix server up just in dozens of minutes.

• Matrix (An open network for secure, decentralized communication) server setup using Ansible and Docker

TODO

Detail steps to setup the Matrix server from https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/blob/master/docs/README.md

See Also

• Matrix Application Services
• Matrix Javascript SDK v2.0
• Bridging infrastructure for Application Services - HOWTO
• Matrix Application Service Bridge Node.js SDK
• Matrix Application Service API
• Matrix Client-Server API
• Matrix Specification

Matrix AppService Bridges in TypeScript

• A bridge between Matrix and Discord

Matrix AppService Bridges in JavaScript

• Matrix<->Skype user-puppeting portal
• Communication Matrix with Skype via puppet
• Matrix AppService Bridge Gitter
• Node.js Telegram bridge for Matrix
• Slack-compatible webhooks for matrix
• A matrix SMS bridge, powered by Twilio
• Node.js IRC bridge for Matrix

Background

• Integrate Wechat with Matrix with the power of Wechaty #1737

This week I had a great talk with YC partner Eric @ericmigi, who is a serial entrepreneur and also a geek with technology. He uses Matrix a lot and almost integrated all the instance messanger to his Matrix.

But, the matrix does not support Wechat yet. So we'd like to introduce a matrix-wechat bridge to implement the Wechat protocol, and fill the gap between Matrix and Wechat.

@ericmigi provide some links that will help us to kick off a starter, hope we could make a workable POC soon, and any contribution will be welcome.

1. homeserver install in 1 hr
2. examples of puppet bridges

— Huan, April 2019

---

@tulir has very rich experiences with building the matrix bridges such as:

1. A Matrix-Telegram hybrid puppeting/relaybot bridge
2. A Matrix-WhatsApp puppeting bridge

— Huan, May 2019

Todo/Question List

• How to get room list from the matrix homeserver from matrix-appservice-bridge ?
• How to get members from a room from the homeserver matrix-appservice-bridge ?
• Use Matrix Remote Room for linking WeChat Room with Matrix Room.

History

master

1. ES Modules support

v0.9 Aug 1, 2021

Finished Display user's nickname and avatar in group #66 and Support image and file messages #86.

1. Support the display of the nickname and name of the contact.
2. Support image and file messages.
3. fix a deprecated function warning.
4. avoid inviting your own wechaty acount to matrix room.

v0.8 Mar 1, 2020

Finished #13: [TypeScript] Add typing system to matrix-js-sdk and matrix-appservice-bridge.

1. Code Refactoring
2. Add !login, !logout command with help message
3. Tested with iPad API(wechaty-puppet-padplus)

v0.6 (Beta) Feb 25, 2020

1. added docker-compose.yaml example. (thanks @ericmigi)
2. Added install documentation

v0.4 (Alpha) July 14, 2019

1. Support receive/send Wechat message in Matrix. (individuals and rooms)
2. Tested with Web API(wechaty-puppet-puppeteer) and iPad API(wechaty-puppet-padpro)

Known Issues

1. The names/avatars of Wechat users/groups are not set right on Matrix.
2. Only support text message, Image/Audio/Video message is not supported yet. (Will be supported in the future version)
3. Appservice will create more than one matrix room for a Wechat room when receiving messages from it for the very first time. (It will stop creating new rooms after you accepted the invitation)
4. Login QR Code should not use the 3rd party API for security considerations. A better way is to upload the QR Code image to matrix server instead.

v0.2 July 6, 2019

1. Enable your matrix account to start using matrix-appservice-wechaty by talk to the bot @wechaty:your.domain
2. After you talk to @wechaty, it will send you Wechat Login QR Code. Scan it to login Wechat
3. All Wechat messages will be bridged to the Matrix system, in the room that you talk to the bot at the very first time.

v0.0.1 May 2019

1. Auto response the message in a Matrix Room.

Disclaimer

I accept no responsibility if Tencent bans your IP, account or even your details on their system. They have never given official support on custom clients.

— Disclaimer based off: matrix-appservice-discord

Special Thanks

Wechaty community has setup the Matrix service(#94) which the server is sponsored by @ericmigi, who is the founder of Beeper, Partner of Y Combinator. He has also founded Pebble Technology (YC W11), which was acquired by Fitbit in 2016.

Learn more about Beeper from Beeper Brings iMessage to Android - No more green bubbles, LG's exit, Android 12, Oneplus and Oppo

Maintainers

• @huan (李卓桓) Tencent TVP of Chatbot, [email protected]
• @zhangchunsheng Peter ZHANG
• @yswtrue Roy
• @lprintf Yujing LIN (see: wechaty/summer#59)

[Matrix] Server Admin:

• @lprintf Yujing LIN

Copyright & License

• Code & Docs © 2019-now Huan and Wechaty Contributors https://wechaty.js.org
• Code released under the Apache-2.0 License
• Docs released under Creative Commons