WhatsApp Export Chat Viewer

A simple and powerful WhatsApp export chat viewer that allows you to browse, search, and analyze your exported WhatsApp chats—right from your browser.

Features

• Image search using OCR (Tesseract)
• Search messages by text or sender
• Filter messages by date
• Fast chat navigation
• Multiple exported chat folders

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RUN WITH DOCKER (Recommended)

You do not need Python or Tesseract installed locally. Everything runs inside Docker.

1. Pull the Docker image:

docker pull sohelshekhin/wp_export_chat_viewer:latest

2. Prepare your chats folder on your computer (see Chat Preparation below)

Example folder structure:

/home/user/chats/
    └── FamilyChat/
         ├── _chat.txt
         └── Media/
             ├── image1.jpg
             └── ...

3. Run the container with your chats mounted:

docker run -p 5000:5000   -v /home/user/chats:/data/chats   sohelshekhin/wp_export_chat_viewer:latest

Open in your browser:

http://localhost:5000

Your chat folders will appear in the picker automatically.

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ALTERNATIVE: COPY CHATS INTO CONTAINER

Not recommended, but supported

Run the container:

docker run -d -p 5000:5000 --name chatviewer sohelshekhin/wp_export_chat_viewer

Copy your chats:

docker cp chats/ chatviewer:/app/chats

Then open:

http://localhost:5000

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CHAT PREPARATION

1. Export the chat from WhatsApp

WhatsApp → Chat → More → Export Chat → WITH Media

This generates:

_chat.txt

2. Create a folder for the chat:

/home/user/chats/FamilyChat/

3. Move _chat.txt inside the folder:

FamilyChat/_chat.txt

4. Create a Media folder for images and videos:

FamilyChat/Media/
    image1.jpg
    image2.jpg

5. Mount the parent folder into Docker:

docker run -p 5000:5000   -v /home/user/chats:/data/chats   sohelshekhin/wp_export_chat_viewer

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CONFIGURATION

config.py supports:

CHAT_ROOT = os.environ.get("CHAT_ROOT", "/data/chats")
SELF_NAME = "Your Name In WhatsApp Export"

Override CHAT_ROOT:

docker run -p 5000:5000   -e CHAT_ROOT=/data/chats   -v /home/user/chats:/data/chats   sohelshekhin/wp_export_chat_viewer

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FOLDER STRUCTURE

app.py
config.py
parsing.py
ocr_utils.py
meta_db.py
chat_state.py

templates/
    base.html
    chat.html
    picker.html

static/
    css/style.css
    js/chat.js

chats/ (optional for local runs)

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RUN LOCALLY (without Docker)

Requirements:

• Python 3.10+
• Tesseract OCR installed

Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Run:

python app.py

Open:

http://localhost:5000

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LICENSE

MIT License