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System Setup

List of all the python libraries that are required

  • numpy
  • pandas
  • matplotlib
  • seaborn
  • wordcloud
  • emoji
  • jovian

Run the following command to get all the listed python libraries

pip install numpy pandas matplotlib seaborn wordcloud emoji jovian --upgrade

Te check whether do you all the required libraries the next should run without any errors

import re
import jovian
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
from wordcloud import WordCloud, STOPWORDS
import emoji
from collections import Counter

How to obtain Whatsapp Chat data

  • Open whatsapp
  • Open a Group/Inbox
  • Click on the 3 dotted options button
  • Click on more
  • Click on export chat
  • Click on without media
  • Export via Email/other IM's/....
  • Download to your system rename to chat-data.txt and put it in a folder

alt

Without media: exports 40k messages 
With media: exports 10k messages along with pictures/videos 
As im are doing chat data analysis i went with `without media` option 

Data Preprocessing

Use a custom a regex and datatime format by reffering to the above links if you run into empty df or format errors. As the exports from whatsapp are not standardized.

def rawToDf(file, key):
    split_formats = {
        '12hr' : '\d{1,2}/\d{1,2}/\d{2,4},\s\d{1,2}:\d{2}\s[APap][mM]\s-\s',
        '24hr' : '\d{1,2}/\d{1,2}/\d{2,4},\s\d{1,2}:\d{2}\s-\s',
        'custom' : ''
    }
    datetime_formats = {
        '12hr' : '%d/%m/%Y, %I:%M %p - ',
        '24hr' : '%d/%m/%Y, %H:%M - ',
        'custom': ''
    }
    
    with open(file, 'r') as raw_data:
        raw_string = ' '.join(raw_data.read().split('\n')) # converting the list split by newline char. as one whole string as there can be multi-line messages
        user_msg = re.split(split_formats[key], raw_string) [1:] # splits at all the date-time pattern, resulting in list of all the messages with user names
        date_time = re.findall(split_formats[key], raw_string) # finds all the date-time patterns
        
        df = pd.DataFrame({'date_time': date_time, 'user_msg': user_msg}) # exporting it to a df
        
    # converting date-time pattern which is of type String to type datetime,
    # format is to be specified for the whole string where the placeholders are extracted by the method 
    df['date_time'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date_time'], format=datetime_formats[key])
    
    # split user and msg 
    usernames = []
    msgs = []
    for i in df['user_msg']:
        a = re.split('([\w\W]+?):\s', i) # lazy pattern match to first {user_name}: pattern and spliting it aka each msg from a user
        if(a[1:]): # user typed messages
            usernames.append(a[1])
            msgs.append(a[2])
        else: # other notifications in the group(eg: someone was added, some left ...)
            usernames.append("grp_notif")
            msgs.append(a[0])

    # creating new columns         
    df['user'] = usernames
    df['msg'] = msgs

    # dropping the old user_msg col.
    df.drop('user_msg', axis=1, inplace=True)
    
    return df