SMS Notify

A (very) simple Ruby application to send SMS using Twilio API.

Prerequisites

First of all you need to create a Twilio Account. We will be using the service Programmable SMS. To get started with that you need to add a phone number capable to send SMS to your destination.

After doing that, write down your API LIVE credentials and TEST credentials.

Set up the application

Clone this repository

git clone https://github.com/leoditommaso/sms_notify.git
cd sms_notify

Install the required Gems

bundle install

Configure the application

Copy the config/config.yml.example file with the name config/config.yml and replace the appropiate values:

production:
  twilio:
    account_sid: 'YOUR_ACCOUNT_SID'
    auth_token: 'YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN'
    from: 'YOUR_FROM_NUMBER'
    body: 'MESSAGE_BODY'
  destination_numbers_file: 'data/numbers'
testing:
  twilio:
    account_sid: 'YOUR_TESTING_ACCOUNT_SID'
    auth_token: 'YOUR_TESTING_AUTH_TOKEN'
    from: "+15005550006"
    body: "Test message."
  destination_numbers_file: 'data/testing'

Note that there are two environments for this application, production and testing. For the testing environment you just need to replace account_sid and auth_token with the ones assigned for your Twilio account. For the production environment you also need to define the from number (the one assigned to your account) and the message body.

The destination_numbers_file configuration option specifies where will the application look for the file with destination mobile numbers. By default is data/testing for testing environment and data/numbers for production.

Note: body message can be up to 160 characters long if using standard ASCII. If your message includes any non-ASCII character, Twilio will automatically change encoding to Unicode and reduce the number of characters per message to 80. Have in mind that you will be charged for each message you send.

Destination numbers file

This file defines the numbers to send SMS to. It expects one phone number per line and each of them with the E.164 number formatting. Check data/testing file for an example.

Usage

Just run:

ruby app.rb

If you do not specify which environment to use, it defaults to testing. So, after running the application check the log file at log/testing.log and there you will find the result of the execution. In this case, many errors and one successful delivery, based on the numbers defined in data/testing and the mapping provided by Twilio.

To run in the production environment you need to define an environment variable called APP_ENV with production as its value. So, execution becomes:

APP_ENV=production ruby.app

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Authors

Author:: Leandro Di Tommaso (leandro.ditommaso@mikroways.net)