Whatsapp Chat Formatter

Summary

When a chat is exported from Whatsapp, the output is a zip folder with a txt file

This GitHub repo changes the chat from a unreadable txt file to a csv file with the following columns: date, time, name, and message. The formatted csv file can be used for data analysis purposes

main.py

open_txt_file(filename)

• Takes in a string which is the name of the txt file with the exported chat
• Returns a list with lists that each have a line of the conversation

format_data(data)

• Takes in what is returned from open_txt_file(filename) which is a list with lists that each have a line of the conversation
• Returns a pandas DataFrame with four columns: date, time, name, message where each row of the DataFrame contains a single message

Running main.py

To run the file, run the following in the terminal:

python3 main.py directory_path filename

where directory_path is the path to the directory where filename is located. The common filename is _chat.txt. A new file will be created in the directory_path directory named {filename}_formatted.csv which contains the result of formatting the txt file into a readable csv.