Installation

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You will finish this page with BaileysEx compiled in your project and ready for a real WhatsApp connection.

Before you begin

  • Elixir 1.19 or newer
  • OTP 28
  • A Rust toolchain available on your machine
  • A WhatsApp account you can pair with a companion client

Steps

1. Add BaileysEx to your dependencies

Add BaileysEx to your mix.exs dependencies.

defp deps do
  [
    {:baileys_ex, "~> 0.1.0-alpha.2"}
  ]
end

BaileysEx builds native code during compilation, so you need Rust on the machine that runs mix compile. Because the current public release is an alpha prerelease, the prerelease version must be requested explicitly.

2. Fetch and compile the project

Run the normal Mix setup commands.

mix deps.get
mix compile

You should see: Generated baileys_ex app

3. Pick a transport and an auth-state path

BaileysEx does not open a network connection unless you pass a transport. The standard choice is BaileysEx.Connection.Transport.MintWebSocket.

alias BaileysEx.Connection.Transport.MintWebSocket

transport = {MintWebSocket, []}
auth_path = "tmp/baileys_auth"

You reuse the same auth path across restarts so you do not need to pair every time.

Check that it worked

Start iex -S mix and load credentials once:

alias BaileysEx.Auth.NativeFilePersistence

{:ok, auth_state} = NativeFilePersistence.load_credentials("tmp/baileys_auth")

You should get a BaileysEx.Auth.State struct back, even the first time.

If you specifically need the Baileys-compatible JSON multi-file layout on disk, use BaileysEx.Auth.FilePersistence instead. For most Elixir applications, the native helper is the recommended default.

Next steps: