What is a WhatsApp reaction?

In more depth

Reactions are cheap acknowledgement. A bot that reacts with a tick to the message it has just accepted tells the sender their request landed without adding another line to the thread, which matters in a busy group where every extra message pushes the conversation up the screen. They are also useful in the other direction: letting people react to a broadcast is a low-friction way to measure interest, and the events tell you exactly who reacted and with what. Two details catch people out. A reaction replaces the reactor's previous reaction rather than adding to it, so your counters must be keyed on the person and not incremented blindly. And a reaction is addressed to a specific message in a specific chat, which means you need the message id exactly as it arrived - rebuilding it from parts fails. Reactions to a message that predates the linked session may not be possible at all if the engine never synced the original.

In the Wapito API

On the wire it is the field emoji:

{
  "event": "messages.reactions",
  "data": {
    "message_id": "true_441234567890@c.us_3EB0",
    "emoji": "+1"
  }
}

On the official Cloud API

The Cloud API supports sending and receiving reactions on messages within a conversation it manages, using its own message type.

Wapito is an independent product. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or certified by WhatsApp or Meta Platforms, Inc. WhatsApp is a trademark of Meta Platforms, Inc.

Related terms

• Poll
• ACK
• JID

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