Twilio Blog

By Sam Agnew 2019-05-07

How to Send Emails in JavaScript/Node.js with SendGrid

So you're building a Node.js app and you need to programmatically send some emails. The Twilio SendGrid API for sending email is a great solution to this problem. If you have a SendGrid account and an API key set as an environment variable, here is all the code you need to send an email in JavaScript:

const sgMail = require('@sendgrid/mail');
sgMail.setApiKey(process.env.SENDGRID_API_KEY);
const msg = {
  to: test@example.com',
  from: 'test@example.com',
  subject: 'Sending with SendGrid is Fun',
  text: 'and easy to do anywhere, even with Node.js',
  html: '<strong>and easy to do anywhere, even with Node.js</strong>',
};
sgMail.send(msg);

Let's walk through how to get this running step by step.

Development Environment Setup

Make sure we have the right software installed that we'll need to use for the rest of this post. Throughout this post you will need ...

By Sam Agnew 2019-05-01

How to Send Emails in Python with Sendgrid

So you're building a Django or Flask app and you need to programmatically send some emails. The Twilio SendGrid API for sending email is a great solution to this problem. If you have a SendGrid account and an API key set as an environment variable, here is all the code you need to send an email in Python:

import os
from sendgrid import SendGridAPIClient
from sendgrid.helpers.mail import Mail

message = Mail(
    from_email='from_email@example.com',
    to_emails='to@example.com',
    subject='Sending with Twilio SendGrid is Fun',
    html_content='<strong>and easy to do anywhere, even with Python</strong>')

sg = SendGridAPIClient(os.environ.get('SENDGRID_API_KEY'))
response = sg.send(message)
print(response.status_code, response.body, response.headers)

Let's walk through how to get this running step by step.

Development Environment Setup

Make sure we have the right software installed that we'll need to use for the rest of this post. Throughout this post ...

By Sam Agnew 2019-04-11

How to send WhatsApp Media Messages with Python

WhatsApp is a messaging service used by people all over the world. With Twilio's Messaging API you can programmatically send WhatsApp messages. Let's walk through how to use Python to send a media message over WhatsApp.

Development Environment Setup

Make sure we have the right software installed and set up that we'll need to use for the rest of this post. Throughout this post, you will need:

Python 2 or 3 installed (do this first if you haven't already)
A free Twilio account with an activated WhatsApp Sandbox
The Twilio Python library

Here is a good guide to follow in general if you are going to be doing more with Twilio and Python.

Sign up for Twilio and activate the Sandbox

Before you can send a WhatsApp message, you'll need to sign up for a Twilio account or sign into your existing account and activate the Twilio Sandbox for WhatsApp ...

By Sam Agnew 2019-04-09

How to Send a WhatsApp Message with JavaScript and Node.js

WhatsApp is a messaging service used by people all over the world. With Twilio's Messaging API you can programmatically send WhatsApp messages. Let's walk through how to use JavaScript to send a message over WhatsApp.

Development Environment Setup

Let's start by making sure we have the right software installed and set up that we'll need to use for the rest of this post. Throughout this post, you will need:

Node.js and npm installed (do this first if you haven't already)
A free Twilio account with an activated WhatsApp Sandbox
The Twilio Node library

Here is a good guide to follow in general if you are going to be doing more with Twilio and Node.js and have any more questions.

Sign up for Twilio and activate the Sandbox

Before you can send a WhatsApp message from your web language, you'll need to sign up for a Twilio account or ...

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 ...