Build a WhatsApp Events Reminder App

Description

This project is designed to send daily reminders of scheduled events via WhatsApp. It uses Vonage's WhatsApp API for messaging and Firebase Firestore as a backend database to store and retrieve event data. This service allows users to receive notifications for today's events and query future events directly through WhatsApp.

Prerequisites

Before you can run this project, you need the following installed:

• Node.js
• npm (Node Package Manager)
• Firebase CLI (Optional, for deploying Firebase functions and managing the Firestore database)
• A Firebase account and a configured Firebase project.
• A Vonage API account
• Localtunnel.me

Installation

Install the dependencies

npm install

Configure your environment variables

Create a .env file in the root directory of the project and populate it with the necessary credentials:

VONAGE_API_KEY=your_vonage_api_key
VONAGE_API_SECRET=your_vonage_api_secret
VONAGE_WHATSAPP_NUMBER=your_vonage_whatsapp_number
TO_NUMBER=destination_number_for_notifications
FIREBASE_PROJECT_ID=your_firebase_project_id

Replace the placeholder values with your actual Vonage and Firebase configurations.

Setup Firebase

• Import your Firebase service account key JSON file to the root of the project.
• Initialize Firebase:

  firebase init

Run the application

lt --port 8000
node index.js

Usage

The application is scheduled to check for today's events and send a message via WhatsApp at a specified time each day. You can query for events on specific dates by sending messages in the format "Events on YYYY-MM-DD?" through WhatsApp.