The goal: to capture the contact information for as many people who are attending a protest as possible, for the purpose of getting them to be more connected and involved in future actions.
cp example_dot_env .env- Open
.envin your editor. You may need to fill in some values for your dev. See comments in that file. npm installnpm run buildnpm startopen http://localhost:3030
If you’re making changes to styles.less, you can use npm run build:watch in a new shell and it will rebuild on every save.
npm testnpm run test:watchto run continuously
ngrok is software that allows you to expose your local dev server to the world using a dynamic domain name, e.g. http://yourngrokurl.ngrok.io.
- Sign up for ngrok.
- Install ngrok. If you use homebrew on a Mac, you can do
brew cask install ngrok. - Install your ngrok authtoken. The command for this can be found on your ngrok dashboard.
- In a new shell, start ngrok with
ngrok http 3030. (Make sure your express server is already running.) - Copy your ngrok hostname; you'll need it to configure Twilio.
Twilio is the API server that routes SMS messages to this app.
- Sign up for a Twilio trial account. You can use this account indefinitely, but you'll only be able to interact with your own phone number.
- Buy a phone number. I think the lowest price is $1/month. (I think new Twilio users get $1 in free credits, so you won't have to enter payment info right away.)
- Configure your phone number in Twilio. In the messaging section, set a webhook for when a message comes in, routing to
http://yourngrokurl.ngrok.io/sms. You'll need to reset this with a new URL each time you start ngrok.
Send an SMS to your new Twilio phone number, from your own phone. You should see the response logged in your express console, and you should get an SMS reply back to your phone.
See the purpose document to learn about what we're aiming to accomplish.