Media
Programmable Chat has been deprecated and is no longer supported. Instead, we'll be focusing on the next generation of chat: Twilio Conversations. Find out more about the EOL process here.
If you're starting a new project, please visit the Conversations Docs to begin. If you've already built on Programmable Chat, please visit our Migration Guide to learn about how to switch.
The Media resource allows media files to be uploaded and downloaded. Media files can be attached to Messages as part of the Media Messaging feature.
Note The Media REST resource is accessed via a separate sub-domain from Chat and other Twilio products. The base URL for Media is:
https://mcs.us1.twilio.com/v1
Authentication
HTTP requests to the REST API are protected with HTTP Basic authentication like other REST APIs provided by Twilio. To learn more about how Twilio handles authentication, please refer to our security documentation. In short, you will use your Twilio account SID as the username and your auth token as the password for HTTP Basic authentication.
curl -G https://mcs.us1.twilio.com/v1/Services \
-u '[YOUR ACCOUNT SID]:[YOUR AUTH TOKEN]'
You can find your account SID and auth token in the admin console. Alternately, you can also use API keys and secrets to authenticate REST API requests - you can manage API key pairs in the console also.
Note: The Media endpoint is not represented in the Twilio Helper Libraries at this stage.
Properties
Each Media resource instance has these properties:
| name | description |
|---|---|
| sid | A 34 character string that uniquely identifies this resource. |
| account_sid | The unique id of the Account responsible for this message. |
| service_sid | The unique id of the Service this message belongs to. |
| date_created | The date that this resource was created. |
| date_updated | The date that this resource was last updated. null if the message has not been edited. |
| channel_sid | The unique id of the Channel the Message this media instance was added to. |
| message_sid | The unique id of the Message this media instance was added to. |
| size | The size of the file this Media instance represents in BYTES |
| content_type | The MIME type of the file this Media instance represents. Please refer to the MIME Types for a list of valid MIME types. |
| file_name | The filename of the underlying media file as specified when uploaded |
| author | The identity of the User that uploaded the Media instance as part of a Message |
| url | An absolute URL for this media instance |
| links | Links to access the underlying media file (content) and a temporary URL to use to access this (content_direct_temporary) |
Create/Upload a new Media resource
POST /Services/{Chat Service SID}/Media
Note that the Chat Service SID above must be the Chat Service instance sid this Media instance will be used for.
A number of options exist for the creation of media. The media file itself needs to be uploaded as content to the POST - although tools such as curl and other clients abstract this and allow a "binary" or similar option to be used, and then passing in only a path. An example of this follows:
Ultimately this will be converted into a POST request, with the following headers and the body being the file itself.
Headers
| name | description / value |
|---|---|
| Content-Type: | Must be: multipart/form-data |
| Content-Size: | The size of the media (the file) being uploaded in bytes |
Body
The body or content of the POST must be the file itself in binary format.
Curl Example
curl -X "POST" -H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data" -F "media=@/path/to/media.jpg;type=image/jpeg" "https://mcs.us1.twilio.com/v1/Services/<chat_instance_sid>/Media/" -u "<acount_sid>:<account_secret>"
Retrieve a Media resource
GET /Services/{Chat Service SID}/Media/{Media SID}
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