Twilio Blog

By Sam Agnew 2020-07-28

Retrieving Twilio MMS Image URLs with Node.js

When working with Twilio MMS, you often need to access a URL to the pictures contained in a message. Typically when the message is initially received, the webhook request that Twilio sends to your application will contain MediaUrl properties that you can use directly in your application. But if you want to use the REST API to access a URL to an image contained in a Message Resource, you need to do a little more work, as the only option available to you is the uri of the Media resource:

message.media().list().then(media => {
  media.forEach(m => {
    const url = 'https://api.twilio.com' + m.uri.replace('.json', '');
    console.log(url);
  });
});

Let's walk through a …

By Sam Agnew 2020-07-25

Retrieving Twilio MMS Image URLs in Python

When working with Twilio MMS, you often need to access a URL to the pictures contained in a message. Typically when the message is initially received, the webhook request that Twilio sends to your application will contain MediaUrl properties that you can use directly in your application. But if you want to use the REST API to access a URL to an image contained in a Message Resource, you need to do a little more work, as the only option available to you is the uri of the Media resource:

if int(message.num_media) > 0:
    for media in message.media.list():
        media_url = 'https://api.twilio.com' + media.uri[:-5] # Strip off the '.json'
        print(media_url)

Let's wa …

By Sam Agnew 2020-07-10

How to Write Lua Scripts for Video Games with the BizHawk Emulator

BizHawk is a multi-system emulator beloved by the Tool Assisted Speedrun community for its recording/playback and debugging tools, as well as Lua scripting functionality that can be used for a variety of purposes.

While there is basic documentation describing some of the functions available in these scripts, the lack of working code samples might make it difficult for some to get started. Let's walk through some of the Lua scripting features the BizHawk emulator provides, and have some fun with real examples.

Setting up the BizHawk emulator

BizHawk runs on multiple operating systems, but Lua scripting is only available on the Windows versions. If you are on Mac or Linux, you can use Wine, although setup might be a bit of an involved process depending on which version of which operating system you're using.

There are installation instructions in the README of the project's repository, including an installer …

By Sam Agnew 2020-05-21

Building a Land Acknowledgement Text Line with Node.js, Twilio, and Puppeteer

In the age of impending climate catastrophe, it is important now more than ever to respect the rights and sovereignty of Native people worldwide. Recognizing the traditional stewards of the land by making land acknowledgements at events or gatherings is a vital first step towards inserting an awareness of Indigenous presence and land rights into everyday life.

This kind of thing has been becoming a bit more commonplace at developer conferences such as JSConf US and PyCascades.

PyCascades Land Acknowledgment

Using Native Land Digital, an Indigenous-led, in-progress project dedicated to helping people learn more about their local traditional Indigenous territories, I created a text messaging bot for people who are on the go to quickly find out which Native territory a given address exists on.

Try it by texting an address to +1 (331) 244-LAND (+1 331 244 5263).

By texting "101 Spear Street" for example, we can see that …

By Sam Agnew 2020-04-29

4 Tools for Web Scraping in Node.js

Sometimes the data you need is available online, but not through a dedicated REST API. Luckily for JavaScript developers, there are a variety of tools available in Node.js for scraping and parsing data directly from websites to use in your projects and applications.

Let's walk through 4 of these libraries to see how they work and how they compare to each other.

Make sure you have up to date versions of Node.js (at least 12.0.0) and npm installed on your machine. Run the terminal command in the directory where you want your code to live:

npm init --yes

For some of these applications, we'll be using the Got library for making HTTP requests, so install that with this command in the same directory:

npm install got@11.0.2

Let's try finding all of the links to unique MIDI files on this web page from the Video Game Music Archive with a …

By Sam Agnew 2020-04-18

Automated Headless Browser scripting in Node.js with Playwright

Copy of Language template - GENERIC3 (3).png

Sometimes the data you need is available online, but not through a public API. Web scraping can be useful in these situations, but only if this data can be accessed statically on a web page. Fortunately for developers everywhere, most things that you can do manually in the browser can be done using Playwright, a Node library built by the same team that made Puppeteer which provides a high-level API for automating various browsers.

Let's walk through how to use Playwright to interact with web pages programmatically. In this example we'll use the Native Land Digital tool, an awesome project built to teach people more about their local indigenous history. In this case, an API does exist, but it only takes location data in the form of geo-coordinates rather than a more user-friendly address. We'll write code to programmatically type an address and figure out which Native land corresponds …

By Sam Agnew 2020-04-08

Web Scraping and Parsing HTML in Node.js with jsdom

The internet has a wide variety of information for human consumption. But this data is often difficult to access programmatically if it doesn't come in the form of a dedicated REST API. With Node.js tools like jsdom, you can scrape and parse this data directly from web pages to use for your projects and applications.

Let's use the example of needing MIDI data to train a neural network that can generate classic Nintendo-sounding music. In order to do this, we'll need a set of MIDI music from old Nintendo games. Using jsdom we can scrape this data from the Video Game Music Archive.

Getting started and setting up dependencies

Before moving on, you will need to make sure you have an up to date version of Node.js and npm installed.

Navigate to the directory where you want this code to live and run the following …

By Sam Agnew 2020-03-25

COVID-19 tracking via SMS with Twilio and Python

Around the world, the Coronavirus Pandemic is affecting people and their communities. It might impact different areas in varying ways, but the virus causing the COVID-19 disease has reached a level of global pervasiveness. The situation is constantly evolving so it can be hard to keep track of.

If you are in the United States, there is a COVID Tracking Project which provides up-to-date statistics for the nation as a whole and for each individual State on the number of tests administered, positive cases, and the death toll. The project also provides this data in the form of an API.
You can text the phone number +1 (864) 77-STATS which is +1 (864) 777-8287 with a particular US State abbreviation to get the current statistics for that State, or any other message to get the nation-wide data.

Let's walk through how to build a text-message-based COVID-19 tracker in Python …

By Sam Agnew 2020-03-25

How to build a Conference line with Twilio Functions

Copy of Language template - node2 (2).png

Another conference call, another app, another PIN, another log-in. Joining conference calls shouldn’t take more than simply dialing a phone number. Lets walk through how you can quickly build a conference line anyone and everyone can use with Twilio Functions.

Setting up a Twilio Function

You’ll need to create a Twilio account if you don’t already have one. From the Twilio Functions page in your Twilio Console, create a new Function and select the “Blank” template as seen in this image:

Create a Twilio Function

Give your function a name and a path.

Give your function a route

Writing code to handle incoming calls

Now replace the default code in the function with the following code for our app, and click save:

exports.handler = funct …

By Sam Agnew 2020-03-24

How to build a Conference line with Twilio and Node.js

Copy of Language template - node2 (1).png

Another conference call, another app, another PIN, another log-in. Joining conference calls shouldn’t take more than simply dialing a phone number. Lets walk through how you can quickly build a conference line anyone and everyone can use with Node.js.

Development Environment Setup

Start by making sure you have the right software installed that you'll need to use for the rest of this post. You will need:

Node.js and npm installed (do this first if you haven't already)
A free Twilio account and a Twilio phone number
The npm modules for Express and 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.

To install these npm modules, navigate to the directory where you want this code to live and run the following command in your terminal to create an npm …