WeChat MP Publisher

Overview

A generic toolkit for pushing and publishing articles to a WeChat Official Account (公众号) via the WeChat MP API. Supports two core operations:

1. Push Draft — Upload article HTML + cover image to the draft box (draft/add)
2. Publish Draft — Publish a draft from the draft box to all subscribers (freepublish/submit)

Plus a daily automation template for scheduled auto-publishing.

First-Time Setup

1. Configure Credentials

Copy assets/.env.example to a permanent location and fill in values:

cp assets/.env.example ~/.wechat-mp.env

Edit the file:

WECHAT_APPID=wx_your_appid_here
WECHAT_SECRET=your_secret_here
WECHAT_AUTHOR=你的公众号名称

Where to find credentials:

• Login to https://mp.weixin.qq.com
• Settings & Development → Development → Basic Configuration
• AppID is visible directly; AppSecret click "Reset" to get (save immediately, only shown once)

2. IP Whitelist

The server IP calling the API must be whitelisted, otherwise errcode=40164.

To get the current server IP:

curl -s https://api.ipify.org

Add this IP at: mp.weixin.qq.com → Development → Basic Configuration → IP Whitelist (IP白名单).

3. API Permissions

• draft/add (push draft): Available to all verified accounts
• freepublish/submit (publish): Requires verified enterprise/organization account (已认证的企业/个体工商户主体). Permission activates ~24 hours after verification. If errcode=48001, the permission is still syncing — publish manually from the draft box.

Core Tasks

Task 1: Push Draft to Draft Box

Use scripts/push_draft.py to push an article as a draft.

python3 scripts/push_draft.py \
  --env ~/.wechat-mp.env \
  --title "文章标题" \
  --digest "文章摘要，不超过120字" \
  --html /path/to/article.html \
  --thumb MEDIA_ID_OR_LEAVE_BLANK

What the script does:

1. Load credentials from the --env file
2. Get access_token (handles 40164 IP whitelist error)
3. If --thumb not provided and a cover image path is given, upload it to the material library first
4. Push the draft via draft/add API
5. Print the resulting media_id

Key constraints:

• Title: max 64 bytes (~21 Chinese characters)
• Digest (摘要): max 120 characters
• Author: leave empty via API (Chinese names exceed 8-byte limit) — set manually in editor
• Article images must use mmbiz.qpic.cn domains (upload to material library first)
• JSON must use ensure_ascii=False to avoid garbled Chinese — the script handles this with curl --data-binary

Task 2: Publish a Draft

Use scripts/publish_draft.py to publish a draft that's already in the draft box.

python3 scripts/publish_draft.py \
  --env ~/.wechat-mp.env \
  --media-id MEDIA_ID_FROM_DRAFT

What the script does:

1. Load credentials from the --env file
2. Get access_token
3. Call freepublish/submit with the media_id
4. Report success (publish_id) or the specific error code

Error handling:

errcode	Meaning	Action
0	Success	Notify user, provide publish_id
48001	API permission not active	Tell user to publish manually from mp.weixin.qq.com draft box
40007	media_id invalid (already published or deleted)	Tell user to check the draft box
-1	System error (transient)	Retry 2-3 times; if persistent, manual publish

Publishing is irreversible — once published, the article goes to all subscribers. Always verify the media_id is correct.

Task 3: Set Up Daily Auto-Publish Automation

Refer to references/automation-template.md for the complete automation prompt. The recommended setup:

1. Draft generation automation — runs daily (e.g., 15:00) to generate article content and push to draft box
2. Publish automation — runs daily (e.g., 20:00) to call freepublish/submit on the day's draft

Create automations using the automation_update tool with:

• scheduleType: "recurring"
• rrule: "FREQ=DAILY;BYHOUR=20;BYMINUTE=0" (for 20:00 daily)
• The prompt from references/automation-template.md

Quick API Reference (Bash)

For ad-hoc operations, use scripts/wechat_api.sh:

source scripts/wechat_api.sh

# Set credentials
export WECHAT_APPID="wx_your_appid"
export WECHAT_SECRET="your_secret"

# Get access token
TOKEN=$(get_wechat_token)

# Upload cover image (returns media_id)
upload_wechat_image "$TOKEN" /path/to/cover.png

# Create draft from JSON file
create_draft "$TOKEN" /path/to/draft.json

# Publish draft
publish_draft "$TOKEN" "MEDIA_ID_HERE"

Resources

• scripts/push_draft.py — Push article HTML to draft box (Python, uses curl for binary-safe JSON)
• scripts/publish_draft.py — Publish a draft via freepublish/submit (Python)
• scripts/wechat_api.sh — Bash helper functions for all WeChat MP API calls
• references/api-guide.md — Detailed API documentation, error codes, encoding gotchas
• references/automation-template.md — Ready-to-use automation prompt for daily publishing
• assets/.env.example — Credential template file