To send a message through WhatsApp without saving the contact’s phone number to your phone’s contact list, you can use the following form:
- Add an input field for the phone number and a submit button to your HTML form:
<form method="post" id="formulario" class="form">
<div class="form_box">
<div class="div_phone">
<input type="tel" name="phone_number" id="phone_number" placeholder="(00) 0000-0000"><br>
</div>
<div class="div_submit">
<input type="submit" class="submit">
</div>
</div>
</form>
- In your PHP code, check if the phone number has been submitted through the form. If it has, use the
preg_replace
function to remove any special characters from the phone number, such as parentheses, dots, or dashes.
if (array_key_exists("phone_number", $_POST)) {
$a = $_POST["phone_number"];
$arr = array('/\(|\)/','/\.|\-/');
$cellphone = preg_replace($arr, "", $a);
}
- Use the
empty
function to check if the phone number is empty. If it is, display an error message to the user.
if (empty($cellphone)) {
echo '<p class="err_text">The phone number cannot be empty!</p>';
}
- If the phone number is not empty, create a URL with the following format:
https://api.whatsapp.com/send?1=pt_BR&phone=55<PHONE NUMBER>&text=<MESSAGE>
. Replace<PHONE NUMBER>
with the phone number submitted through the form and<MESSAGE>
with the message you want to send.
$whats = "https://api.whatsapp.com/send?1=pt_BR&phone=55";
$message = "&text=Hello, I am using WhatsApp";
$link = "{$whats}{$cellphone}{$message}";
- Use the
header
function to redirect the user to the WhatsApp web page with the URL you created.
header("Location: {$link}");
This will open the WhatsApp web page with the phone number and message pre-filled, allowing the user to send the message without saving the contact’s phone number to their phone’s contact list.