The sgcWebSockets WhatsApp component empowers Delphi teams to deliver instant, personalized conversations at scale. Whether you build CRM integrations, help-desk portals or transactional notification services, the component provides a secure, resilient and fully supported bridge to WhatsApp Business messaging. This article combines the commercial value with the technical detail you need to deliver production-ready chat flows quickly.
Business Impact at a Glance
- Faster onboarding: Prebuilt authentication, message routing and session management reduce project kick-off to hours instead of days.
- Higher engagement: Push promotional offers, reminders and alerts on the channel your customers already trust.
- Lower operational costs: Automate conversations and support flows without maintaining a proprietary messaging stack.
Architecture Overview
The component encapsulates the WhatsApp Business API REST endpoints and WebSocket callbacks into a Delphi-friendly interface. It manages token refreshes, message formatting (text, templates, media) and asynchronous delivery reports. Internally it relies on sgcWebSockets core transports, so you benefit from the same TLS, reconnection and threading model used throughout the framework.
Prerequisites
- sgcWebSockets Professional or Enterprise.
- An active WhatsApp Business Platform account with valid App ID, App Secret and Access Token.
- sgcWebSockets installed with the WhatsApp component package registered.
Component Configuration in Delphi
Drop the TsgcWhatsAppClient component onto your data module or service form. Configure the essential properties inside the Object Inspector or in code during initialization.
Design-Time Settings
- Fill PhoneNumberID with the sender phone ID provided by Meta.
- Assign AccessToken and optionally the AppSecretProof if you enforce signed requests.
- Enable AutoReconnect to true to keep the WebSocket channel alive.
- Attach the OnMessageStatus and OnIncomingMessage events for delivery receipts and inbound chat handling.
Sending Messages
Use the SendText and SendTemplate helper methods for high-level scenarios, or access the Messages collection for advanced payloads.
Receiving and Automating Responses
The component includes a built-in webhook listener leveraging sgcWebSockets HTTP server features. Map the webhook path to your published endpoint and process replies inside event handlers.
Advanced Configuration
- Template Management: Invoke ListTemplates to fetch approved message templates and keep them cached in memory.
- Media Uploads: Use UploadMedia with a TBytesStream to deliver PDFs, images or voice notes.
- Scheduling: Combine with TsgcScheduler to orchestrate campaigns based on CRM triggers.
- Analytics: Hook OnMessageStatus events to log delivery/read receipts for BI dashboards.
Advantages of Using the WhatsApp Component
- Unified Support Stack: Integrates seamlessly with existing sgcWebSockets transports, so you maintain a single framework for HTTP, MQTT, AMQP and WhatsApp messaging.
- Strong Security: TLS 1.3 support, configurable token refresh intervals and signature validation protect every message.
- High Throughput: Built-in throttling and parallel send queues help you stay within Meta rate limits while delivering campaigns quickly.
- Developer Productivity: Delphi components, events and property editors keep your code strongly typed and IDE-friendly, reducing maintenance overhead.
- Scalable Deployments: Works across Windows services, desktop apps and load-balanced servers thanks to non-blocking sockets and asynchronous callbacks.