How to get a profile photo in Python with the Wapito WhatsApp API

Before you start

• pip install requests
• os.environ["WAPITO_TOKEN"]
• A channel with a WhatsApp number linked to it, and its API token. Create one in the dashboard — the authentication guide shows where the token goes.

The whole script

Every step above in one runnable file. Save it as profile-picture.py, put your token in the environment, and run it.

"""Profile Picture with the Wapito WhatsApp API.

Read a contact or chat picture where privacy allows, set your own number's photo, and refresh your cache from contact events.

Run it with:
    export WAPITO_TOKEN="wpt_..."
    python profile-picture.py
"""
import os

import requests

BASE_URL = "https://api.wapito.com/v1"
TOKEN = os.environ["WAPITO_TOKEN"]

# --- Read a contact's profile ---
url = BASE_URL + "/contacts/+15551234567/profile"

headers = {"Authorization": "Bearer " + TOKEN}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)

print(response.json())

# --- Read a chat picture ---
url = BASE_URL + "/chats/15551234567@s.whatsapp.net/picture"

headers = {"Authorization": "Bearer " + TOKEN}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)

print(response.json())

# --- Set the linked number's own photo ---
url = BASE_URL + "/users/profile"

payload = {
    "name": "Acme Support",
    "status": "Replies Mon-Fri, 9 to 6 UK time."
}
headers = {
    "Authorization": "Bearer " + TOKEN,
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

response = requests.patch(url, json=payload, headers=headers)

print(response.json())

Receive the webhook

FastAPI receiver for contacts — it verifies the signature, answers immediately and does the work after. Install it with pip install fastapi uvicorn and save it as webhook.py.

import hashlib
import hmac
import os
import time

from fastapi import FastAPI, Header, HTTPException, Request

app = FastAPI()
SECRET = os.environ["WAPITO_WEBHOOK_SECRET"].encode()
EVENTS = ["contacts"]


def verify(raw: bytes, header: str | None) -> bool:
    """Checks the X-Wapito-Signature header: t=<ms>,v1=<hex hmac-sha256>."""
    if not header:
        return False
    parts = dict(p.split("=", 1) for p in header.split(",") if "=" in p)
    ts, sig = parts.get("t"), parts.get("v1")
    if not ts or not sig:
        return False
    if abs(time.time() * 1000 - int(ts)) > 300_000:  # 5 minute clock skew
        return False
    expected = hmac.new(SECRET, ts.encode() + b"." + raw, hashlib.sha256).hexdigest()
    return hmac.compare_digest(expected, sig)


@app.post("/wapito")
async def wapito(request: Request, signature: str | None = Header(default=None, alias="X-Wapito-Signature")):
    raw = await request.body()
    if not verify(raw, signature):
        raise HTTPException(status_code=401, detail="bad signature")
    payload = await request.json()
    if payload["event"] in EVENTS:
        print(payload["event"], payload["data"])
    return {"ok": True}  # answer 2xx fast; do the real work in a queue

Errors you may hit

• business_account_required (409)
• unsupported_media_type (415)

Gotchas

• requests does not raise on a 4xx by itself. Call response.raise_for_status() or check response.ok, otherwise a 429 send_rate_limited silently looks like a successful send and your loop keeps hammering the queue.
• json= and data= are not interchangeable. Pass json={...} so requests sets Content-Type: application/json and encodes UTF-8 for you; data= with a dict sends form encoding and the API answers 400 invalid_request.
• The default requests timeout is None, which means a stalled connection hangs your worker forever. Always pass timeout=(5, 30) and treat a read timeout as "maybe delivered" - re-check with the message id before you send again.
• A group id such as 120363000000000000@g.us is a string, not a number. Building it with an f-string from an int drops the precision and you get 404 not_found.
• Emoji and accented text need no extra work in Python 3, but reading a CSV of numbers with the default encoding on Windows will mangle them - open files with encoding="utf-8".

Where to run it

• Google Cloud Run (container, scale to zero, one revision per deploy)
• Render background worker for the sender, Render web service for the webhook receiver
• A 1 GB VPS with systemd for the worker and Caddy in front of the FastAPI receiver
• AWS Lambda + API Gateway for the webhook receiver only (the sender needs a long-lived process for queue spacing)

Pitfalls in Python

• Caching None for a withheld picture with no expiry means a contact who later saves your number still shows as empty; store the time you checked and re-read after the contacts event or a long timeout.
• requests.patch with data= sends form encoding and the profile endpoint answers 400 invalid_request; pass json= as with every other write.
• A cache in a module-level dict is per-process, and a FastAPI app under several workers keeps several caches; use Redis or a table when you run more than one worker.

Frequently asked questions

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