Whatsapp Notification Web App

This web app is a notification subscription application wherein, user can subscribe for real-time updated notifications of an event.

This repository contains a template of the project. Keep reading to learn about how the project works, and what you should do to get the project running on your system.

Quick Summary:

Use this template to start build your own whatsapp notification system.
npm install and npm start to run the project.
You will be needing a twilio account to get this project running.

The project template

This project is a Node.js Express application.

Express is a minimal web framework for Node.js that lets us define handlers (functions) for routes (URLs). If this is new to you, check out the more about express.
The project includes twilio and axios:
- You can use twilio to integrate Twilio into your project.
- axios is a library for making HTTP requests. We can use it to make HTTP requests in our code, a bit like using curl but in Node.js.
The application has three routes: two GET and one POST.
The root / route simply responds with Hello World.
The /github route is a dynamic route. It uses the next part of the URL in the handler to make a request to the GitHub API. This is an example of using other APIs from our own code, using Axios.
The /sms route is similar to the POST route from the Twilio SMS mission you would have seen in Week 5 of TwilioQuest. It's provided as a starting point for using Twilio in your project.
The project uses nodemon so you don't have to restart the application everytime you make a change: it will automatically restart.

Getting the project

This project is a GitHub Template Repository. You can make a copy of this template in your own repository by clicking the green "Use this template" button. You can read more here.

Once you have created the repository from the template, you can Clone the repository to your machine by running git clone in your terminal.

Setting up the project

Whenever we start using a new Node.js project, we start by running npm install.
npm install checks the package.json for the project's dependencies: these are the libraries and other modules that the project uses. npm will download and install any dependencies so that they are available for the project.
In this project, npm will download express, twilio, axios, and nodemon. You may see it downloading other modules, because it will also download the dependencies for our dependencies!
Once npm install has finished, you should set the environment variables for Twilio.
- These are TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID for your account SID, and TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN for your auth token.
- You can find both of these in your Twilio Console.
- If you don't know how to set environment variables on your system, check out this blog post
Now you are ready to start the application, with npm start.
- npm start is a custom install script specified in package.json. Rather than starting the app with node index.js, we start it with nodemon so that the app automatically restarts whenever we change any code!
Your application will now be running on localhost:3000. You can verify that by opening localhost:3000 in your browser: you should see Hello World.
Check out the src/routes file to see what other routes are available to test. Remember, we can only test the GET routes in our browser!
You may want to use ngrok to generate a public URL for the application if you plan to use the POST route, or to receive requests from outside your network.

Working on the project

Now you've got the template working, to build something similar like this, you first have to figure out whatsapp messaging service via Twilio, to know more about this go to : Twilio Sandbox Config
Now, after you've figured out the whatsapp messaging service in your program, you might wanna figure out, what all numbers have subsribed to your messaging system (To know this go to your Twilio Console > Messaging (On the left hand side menu) > Settings > Whatsapp sandbox settings )
After you have added the numbers you can send in the messages using npm start in your terminal.
Congrats! you've sent your first message.
Now, we have to figure out the scheduling system so, to do that, a function available in JS namely, setTimeout can come in very handy, (use this function according to your own conditions). You can check out this doc to get started with the function : setTimeout
Voila! you have your scheduled notification system running <3

How should i implement this project?

To implement this project, follow these steps:-

Send a message join fallen-flies to +14155238886 and woo-hoo you are added to the messaging list.
To check if the project is running follow the instructions in Setting up the project.
After you are done with the setup, you have to open the routes.js file in the code editor of your own choice.
Then, add your number to an the array namely, "phonenumbers" and then save the file.
Use npm start to check if you're recieving the message or not (Currently the program is set to send you a message after a minute)

That's all in this small project, hope you liked it :) Developed by Chiranjeev