How to Send Template Messages in WeChat Official Accounts Using PHP

How to Send Template Messages in WeChat Official Accounts Using PHP

With the growing popularity of WeChat Official Accounts, more developers and businesses are exploring WeChat’s development features. One of the most commonly used features is template messages, which allow sending structured notifications to users. These messages are widely used in scenarios like order updates, notifications, and reminders. This article walks you through how to implement this functionality in PHP with practical code examples.

Requirements for Sending Template Messages

Before you can send a template message via PHP, make sure you meet the following prerequisites:

• An authenticated WeChat Official Account (can be a subscription account, service account, or enterprise account)
• Your account’s AppID and AppSecret
• A valid template ID, which you can apply for on the WeChat Official Account platform

How to Get Access Token

The access token is required for accessing the WeChat API and has a limited validity period. Here’s how you can fetch it using PHP:

function getAccessToken($appId, $appSecret) {
    $apiUrl = "https://api.weixin.qq.com/cgi-bin/token?grant_type=client_credential&appid=" . $appId . "&secret=" . $appSecret;
    $response = file_get_contents($apiUrl);
    $result = json_decode($response, true);

    // Check if token is valid
    if (isset($result['access_token'])) {
        return $result['access_token'];
    } else {
        // Handle error
        return false;
    }
}

$accessToken = getAccessToken($appId, $appSecret);

How to Send a Template Message

Once the access token is obtained, you can send a template message using the following function:

function sendTemplateMessage($accessToken, $openId, $templateId, $data) {
    $apiUrl = "https://api.weixin.qq.com/cgi-bin/message/template/send?access_token=" . $accessToken;

    $postData = array(
        'touser' => $openId,
        'template_id' => $templateId,
        'data' => $data
    );

    $jsonData = json_encode($postData);

    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $apiUrl);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $jsonData);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/json'));
    $response = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

    return $response;
}

// Sample template message data
$templateData = array(
    'first' => array('value' => 'Hello', 'color' => '#173177'),
    'keyword1' => array('value' => 'Template Message', 'color' => '#173177'),
    'keyword2' => array('value' => '2020-01-01', 'color' => '#173177'),
    'remark' => array('value' => 'Thank you for using our service', 'color' => '#173177')
);

$response = sendTemplateMessage($accessToken, $openId, $templateId, $templateData);

// Handle response
$result = json_decode($response, true);
if ($result['errcode'] == 0) {
    echo "Template message sent successfully!";
} else {
    echo "Failed to send message. Error: " . $result['errmsg'];
}

The sendTemplateMessage function accepts the access token, the user’s OpenID, the template ID, and the message data array. Each item in the data array corresponds to a placeholder defined in your WeChat template.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we demonstrated how to implement template message functionality in a WeChat Official Account using PHP. You first need to acquire an access token, then use that token to send structured messages to users. With the provided code examples, developers can quickly integrate this feature into their applications and enhance user communication effectively.

This guide aims to help PHP developers streamline their workflow when working with the WeChat Official Account messaging API.