Twilio Blog

By Sam Agnew 2018-11-21

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 ...

By Sam Agnew 2018-05-03

Playing Pokemon via SMS in Swift Using Vapor and Twilio

Pokemon filled many childhoods with joy. For some of us as adults, server side Swift does the same. What better way to spend a fun afternoon than combining the two?

Let’s walk through how to build your own version of Twitch Plays Pokemon powered by text messages using the Twilio API, Vapor and Lua scripting for the Visual Boy Advance emulator.

Getting Equipped

Before moving on you’ll need to do the following to set up your environment:

Install wine to be able to run the emulator we need, as only the Windows version has Lua scripting functionality.

If you’re on a Mac, you can install Wine using Homebrew with the following command:

brew install wine

You might have issues getting the emulator to run by default, so make sure you have a 32-bit prefix set by running the following commands in your terminal:

rm -rf ~/.wine
WINEARCH ...