Twilio Blog

By Sam Agnew 2018-12-18

Generating music with Python and Neural Networks using Magenta for TensorFlow

Machine Learning is all the rage these days, and with open source frameworks like TensorFlow developers have access to a range of APIs for using machine learning in their projects. Magenta, a Python library built by the TensorFlow team, makes it easier to process music and image data in particular.

Since I started learning how to code, one of the things that has always fascinated me was the concept of computers artificially creating music. I even published a paper talking about it in an undergrad research journal my freshman year of college.

Let's walk through the basics of setting up Magenta and programmatically generating some simple melodies in MIDI file format.

Installing Magenta

First we need to install Magenta, which can be done using pip. Make sure you create a virtual environment before installing. I am using Python 3.6.5, but Magenta is compatible with both Python 2 and ...

By Sam Agnew 2018-11-21

Working with JSON in Swift

Often developers need to deal with data in various different formats and JSON, short for JavaScript Object Notation, is one of the most popular choices. This is the syntax that the JavaScript language uses to denote objects.

For this post, we are going to use the following modified JSON data from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day API to cover some basic examples of scenarios where you'd need to parse JSON. You will need to be running Swift 4.0 or greater. The following JSON is the example that we are going to be working with:

{
    "copyright": "Yin Hao",
    "date": "2018-10-30",
    "explanation": "Meteors have been shooting out from the constellation of Orion. This was expected, as October is the time of year for the Orionids Meteor Shower. Pictured here, over two dozen meteors were caught in successively added exposures last October over Wulan Hada volcano in Inner Mongolia, China. The ...

By Sam Agnew 2018-11-02

Working with JSON in Python

Often developers need to deal with data in various different formats and JSON, short for JavaScript Object Notation, is one of the most popular formats used in web development. This is the syntax that the JavaScript language uses to denote objects.

As a Python developer, you may notice that this looks eerily similar to a Python dictionary. There are several different solutions to working with JSON in Python, and more often than not this data is loaded into a dictionary.

For this post, we are going to use the following modified JSON data from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day API. Navigate to where you want to run the example code, create a file called apod.json and add the following to it:

{
    "copyright": "Yin Hao",
    "date": "2018-10-30",
    "explanation": "Meteors have been shooting out from the constellation of Orion. This was expected, as October is the time of year for ...

By Sam Agnew 2018-08-09

Improving your pun game with Python, Rhymebrain and the Twilio API for WhatsApp

Puns are awesome and one easy way to come up with puns is to combine two different words. This is called a portmanteau. Let’s build a WhatsApp bot that gives you portmanteaus for certain words that you message it, so you can come up with better puns on the fly!

We’ll be using the Rhymebrain API for the portmanteaus and the Twilio API for WhatsApp to program our WhatsApp bot.

Setting up

To get started make sure you have:

A Twilio account (sign up for a free Twilio account here)
The WhatsApp Sandbox Channel.

Follow these instructions to install the WhatsApp Sandbox Channel in your account.
You will also need to connect your own WhatsApp account with the sandbox

Python 3 installed, and your development environment set up.

Like with Twilio Programmable SMS we’ll need a webhook that will respond to incoming HTTP requests with every message ...

By Sam Agnew 2018-07-17

Sending text messages from your iOS app in Swift using MFMessageComposeViewController

Do you ever want to send text messages in your iOS app from your user’s phone number? While you can’t do this directly without your user’s consent, you can display a pre-composed message for your user to send using MFMessageComposeViewController.

If you want to programmatically send an SMS from a different phone number, you can do this with Swift using Twilio.

That’s cool. Let’s send a message!

If you already have an app and want to get straight to the point, here’s the code you need to display the message composition interface:

let composeVC = MFMessageComposeViewController()
composeVC.messageComposeDelegate = self

// Configure the fields of the interface.
composeVC.recipients = ["13142026521"]
composeVC.body = "I love Swift!"

// Present the view controller modally.
if MFMessageComposeViewController.canSendText() {
    self.present(composeVC, animated: true, completion: nil)
}

This code will send a text message to a Twilio number that is set up to give ...

By Sam Agnew 2018-06-01

Handling Incoming Phone Calls with Server Side Swift, Vapor and Twilio

You’re building a Vapor app and want to be able to handle phone calls? Let’s walk through how to add Twilio Programmable Voice to the barebones Vapor “Hello World” app.

Swift Package Manager

For this project we’re going to use Swift Package Manager to set everything up and install dependencies. Make sure you have Swift 4.0 or greater installed before moving on. You can check your Swift version by running the following in your terminal:

swift --version

Vapor has a convenient command line tool which can be used to generate templates for projects. Installing this will also take care of other necessary dependencies.

You can install it using Homebrew with the following command:

brew tap vapor/homebrew-tap
brew install vapor

Now initiate a new Swift project with the following terminal command in the directory where you want your code to live:

swift package init --type ...

By Sam Agnew 2018-05-30

How to receive/download picture messages in Node.js with Twilio MMS

Have you ever needed to programmatically download an image from an MMS message sent to your Twilio number? Well here’s all the code you need to do this using Node.js and Express:

const fs = require('fs');
const express = require('express');
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');
const request = require('request');
const MessagingResponse = require('twilio').twiml.MessagingResponse;

const app = express();

app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false } ));

app.post('/sms', (req, res) => {
  const twiml = new MessagingResponse();

  if(req.body.NumMedia !== '0') {
    const filename = `${req.body.MessageSid}.png`;
    const url = req.body.MediaUrl0;

    // Download the image.
    request(url).pipe(fs.createWriteStream(filename))
      .on('close', () => console.log('Image downloaded.'));

    twiml.message('Thanks for the image!');
  } else {
    twiml.message("Try sending a picture message.");
  }

  res.send(twiml.toString());
});

app.listen(3000, () => console.log('Example app listening on port 3000!'));

To run the above code, you’ll need to have the Twilio Node ...

By Sam Agnew 2018-05-29

Receiving and Responding to Text Messages with Server Side Swift, Vapor and Twilio

You’re building a Vapor app and want to be able to respond to SMS messages? Let’s walk through how to add Twilio SMS to the barebones Vapor “Hello World” app.

Swift Package Manager

For this project we’re going to use Swift Package Manager to set everything up and install dependencies. Make sure you have Swift 4.0 or greater installed before moving on. You can check your Swift version by running the following in your terminal:

swift --version

Vapor has a convenient command line tool which can be used to generate templates for projects. Installing this will also take care of other necessary dependencies.

You can install it using Homebrew with the following command:

brew tap vapor/homebrew-tap
brew install vapor

Now initiate a new Swift project with the following terminal command in the directory where you want your code to live:

swift package init --type ...

By Sam Agnew 2018-05-21

How to receive a POST request with server side Swift using Vapor

After displaying text on a web page, receiving a POST request is the “Hello, World” v2 of building a web app. Let’s walk through how to do that using the popular server side Swift web framework, Vapor.

Swift Package Manager

For this project we’re going to use Swift Package Manager to set everything up and install dependencies. Make sure you have Swift 4.0 or greater installed before moving on. You can check your Swift version by running the following in your terminal:

swift --version

Vapor has a convenient command line tool which can be used to generate templates for projects. We won’t be using that functionality in this post, as our needs are more simple, but installing this will also install other necessary dependencies.

You can install it using Homebrew with the following command:

brew tap vapor/homebrew-tap
brew install vapor

Now initiate a new ...

By Sam Agnew 2018-05-10

How to receive and download picture messages in Python with Twilio MMS

Have you ever needed to programmatically download an image from an MMS message sent to your Twilio number? Well here’s all the code you need to do this using Python and Flask:

import requests
from flask import Flask, request, redirect
from twilio.twiml.messaging_response import MessagingResponse


DOWNLOAD_DIRECTORY = '/Path/to/your/code/directory'
app = Flask(__name__)


@app.route("/sms", methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def sms_reply():
    """Respond to incoming with a simple text message."""

    resp = MessagingResponse()

    if request.values['NumMedia'] != '0':

        # Use the message SID as a filename.
        filename = request.values['MessageSid']   '.png'
        with open('{}/{}'.format(DOWNLOAD_DIRECTORY, filename), 'wb') as f:
           image_url = request.values['MediaUrl0']
           f.write(requests.get(image_url).content)

        resp.message("Thanks for the image!")
    else:
        resp.message("Try sending a picture message.")

    return str(resp)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run(debug=True)

To run the above code, you’ll need to have the Twilio Python helper library installed, as ...