Programmable Messaging PHP Quickstart

In a few lines of code, your PHP application can send, receive, and reply to text messages with Twilio Programmable SMS.

This PHP SMS Quickstart shows you how to use our Communications REST API, the Twilio CLI, and the Twilio PHP helper library.

We’ll use the package manager Composer to manage our product dependencies. If you don’t want to use Composer, no problem — we also have a separate non-Composer PHP SMS Quickstart.

In this Quickstart, you’ll learn how to:

1. Sign up for Twilio and purchase an SMS-enabled phone number.
2. Check and install any prerequisites using Composer.
3. Send your first SMS.
4. Set up your development environment to send and receive messages.
5. Receive inbound text messages.
6. Reply to incoming messages with a return SMS.

Sign up — or into — Twilio

Install the Twilio CLI

We’ll need to use the Twilio CLI (command line interface) for a few tasks, so let’s install that now.

Next, we need to install PHP and the Twilio PHP Helper Library.

Install PHP and the Twilio PHP Helper Library

To send your first SMS, let's make sure you’re set up with PHP and able to install Twilio’s PHP Helper library. When doing web development in PHP, we strongly suggest using Composer for package management. This Quickstart relies on Composer to install the PHP Helper library. If you choose not to use Composer, please visit our non-Composer PHP SMS Quickstart.

Install PHP

If you’re using a Mac or *nix machine, you may have PHP already installed. In your favorite terminal, run:

php --version

If it is not installed, follow the PHP installation instructions.

If you’re using a Windows machine, please follow the official PHP tutorial to install PHP.

Install Composer

Composer is the de facto standard package manager for PHP web development. If you haven’t yet installed it, here are the installation instructions for your platform:

• Install Composer for macOS, Linux, or Unix
• Install Composer for Windows

If you’d prefer to install dependencies manually, check out our non-Composer PHP SMS Quickstart.

Install the Twilio PHP Helper Library

We need to install the Twilio PHP Helper Library in the directory where you will complete the Quickstart. If you are using Composer, there are two ways to do this.

First, from a terminal, you can run the following command:

composer require twilio/sdk

Alternatively, you can create a file named composer.json and then add the following to it:

{
    "require": {
        "twilio/sdk": "^5.0"
    }
}

Then run

composer install

And composer will grab the latest version of the Twilio PHP Helper Library.

Finally, for a non-composer installation follow the instructions here. You’ll also need to change the code samples as they appear in this Quickstart as shown in those instructions.

Send an outbound SMS with PHP

Now that we have PHP, Composer, and twilio-php installed, we can make a single API request and send an outbound text message from our Twilio phone number. Create and open a new file called send_sms.php and type or paste in this code sample.

Replace the placeholder Twilio credentials

Swap the placeholders in account_sid and auth_token with your personal Twilio credentials. Replace the values for account_sid and auth_token with your unique values.

Replace the twilio_number phone number

Earlier, you purchased an SMS-enabled phone number. Paste that number into the twilio_number variable using E.164 formatting:

[+][country code][phone number including area code]

Replace the ‘To’ number in the create() call

The first value in the call to create() is the outgoing phone number, currently set to +15558675310. This can be any phone number that can receive text messages, but you should use a number you control first to witness the magic! As above, use E.164 formatting for this number.

Save the file then run the script:

php send_sms.php

Boom! Assuming all the values are correct, you should already see the SMS from your Twilio number on your phone.

Are your customers in the US or Canada? You can also send them MMS messages by adding just one line of code. Check out this guide to sending MMS to see how to do it.

Receive and reply to inbound SMS messages with PHP

When someone sends an SMS to your Twilio phone number, Twilio makes an HTTP POST request to your server asking for instructions on what to do next. For this Quickstart, we’ll reply to the sender with a note about how we're sending our SMS reply.

We’ll again use the Twilio PHP Library, then use PHP’s built-in development webserver in combination with ngrok to instruct Twilio how to handle the message. Create a new file reply_sms.php in the same directory as send_sms.php, open it, then copy and paste or type the following code.

Save the file, then start the PHP development server with:

php -S localhost:8000

In your favorite browser, open the URL http://localhost:8000/reply_sms.php.

If all went well, you should see TwiML in your browser with the message we’d like to reply with to all our inbound texts. And, yes, that’s all the code you need. But there’s just one more step you need to perform before everything is wired up.

Configure ngrok and your webhook URL

We'll use ngrok to set up a tunnel from the public internet to your localhost. This will let us use a public URL as the webhook for your application.

First, download and configure ngrok.

Next, run this command to have ngrok set up a tunnel to your localhost:

ngrok http 8000

This will start an ngrok tunnel. Copy down the Forwarding URL that ends with ngrok.io.

Then, you need to configure your Twilio phone number to call your webhook URL whenever a new message comes in:

1. Go to Phone Numbers > Active Numbers in the Twilio Console.
2. Select the SMS-enabled Twilio number you want to use.
3. For the A MESSAGE COMES IN webhook, enter the ngrok URL you copied down earlier. Append /reply_sms.php to the end of the URL.

Test your application with a text

Now that everything is glued together, it’s time to test.

Send a text message from your mobile phone to your Twilio phone number. You’ll see a couple of things happen very quickly:

1. Your PHP dev server will note a new connection.
2. Twilio will forward your response back as an SMS!

Next steps

Now that you know the basics of sending and receiving SMS and MMS text messages with PHP, you might want to check out these resources:

• Our extensive API Reference documentation for Twilio SMS.
• Learn how to create an SMS conversation in PHP.
• Track the delivery status of your messages with PHP.
• Try TwilioQuest, our interactive, self-paced game that teaches you how to Twilio.

We hope you enjoyed the quickstart, and definitely can’t wait to see what you build!