How do you obtain a WeChat access_token certificate from api.wechat.com?

Question 1

Essentially we @ WeChat have 2 types of accounts, subscription and service. Subscription account only gives you access to the Message API which allows for receiving messages and autoresponses and allows you to broadcast to your users once a day. Subscription accounts are also grouped in a category in your contacts under subscription.

A service account gives you an APP ID and APP SECRET which allows you to generate an access token which is needed for pretty much all the other API's apart from the Message API. A service account displays in the user's contact list under the main chats in between all your other normal contacts. You can only broadcast to each of your users once a month on a service account.

If you have a service account you will get the APP ID and APP SECRET from admin.wechat.com -> login -> function -> advanced -> developer mode -> Just under your token you will see the APP ID and APP SECRET

To see what type of account you have go to admin.wechat.com -> login and then look at the top right of the screen next to your account name you will see your account name and just above that it will either say subscription account or service account.

If you want to test all the API's I recommend going to the developer sandbox environment where you get full access to all the API's: How does link with href for Line and Wechat?

Please note your number needs to be in the international format so 072 111 2233 you have to enter as +27721112233

Question 2

Login http://admin.wechat.com
[advanced] --> [Developer Mode], you will got your Appid & AppSecret.
You don't have a wechat OA account?
- Join [WeChat Space] https://plus.google.com/communities/102783597675617808511

Question 3

You may go to http://dev.wechat.com/ to sign up for a developer account.

After you sign up, you will get your App ID and AppKey via your signup email.

Then, you can go to http://admin.wechat.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page to obtain more information.

Question 4

I wrote a code snippet on github that explains the entire process. The code is for django but can be used with any python framework

here is a snippet

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

from wechat.views import WeChatView


MyCustomView(WeChatView):
    token = "ad4sf65weG7Db6ddWE"

    on_message(self, message):

        root = ET.fromstring(message)

        from = root[1].text
        message_type = root[3].text
        content = root[4].text

        print('from: {}'.format(from))
        print('message type: {}'.format(message_type))
        print('content: {}'.format(content))

The full code is here https://github.com/tawanda/django-wechat

Question 5

Here's my code,maybe you can try it.

//Getting access_token from customize menus 
static function get_access_token($appid,$secret){  
$url="https://api.weixin.qq.com/cgi-bin/token?grant_type=client_credential&appid=".$appid."&secret=".$secret;  
    $json=http_request_json($url);//here cannot use file_get_contents  
    $data=json_decode($json,true);  
    if($data['access_token']){  
        return $data['access_token'];  
    }else{  
        return "Error occurred while geting the access_token";  
    }         
}  
//Though URL request is https',cannot use file_get_contents.Using CURL while asking the JSON data  
function http_request_json($url){    
$ch = curl_init();  
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);  
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);  
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);  
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);  
$result = curl_exec($ch);  
curl_close($ch);  
return $result;    
}