ETA Notifications with PHP and Laravel

Time to read: 2 minutes

January 10, 2017
Written by
Mario Celi
Contributor
Opinions expressed by Twilio contributors are their own
Reviewed by
Paul Kamp
Twilion
Andrew T. Baker
Twilion
Kat King
Twilion
Stephanie Marchante
Twilion

eta-php-laravel

Companies like Uber, TaskRabbit, and Instacart have built an entire industry around the fact that we, the customers, like to order things instantly, wherever we are.

The key to these services working is notifying customers instantly when things change.  Customers appreciate being in the loop on order status, and (of course) like to know when something changes.

In this tutorial, we'll build a notification system for a fake on-demand laundy service Laundr.io with PHP and Laravel.

Let's get started!

Trigger the Notifications

The delivery person's screen will have two buttons to update orders which are wired to the appropriate routes:

  1. Delivery person picks up laundry to be delivered ( /pickup )
  2. Delivery person is arriving at the customer's house (/deliver )

The buttons will suffice for our demo app.  In a production app you would likely use GPS to trigger deliver, but the concept is the same.

This is a migrated tutorial. You can clone the code from https://github.com/TwilioDevEd/eta-notifications-laravel/

<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Http\Requests;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use App\Order;
use Twilio\Rest\Client;
use Log;

class OrderController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        return view('index', ['orders' => Order::all()]);
    }

    public function show($id)
    {
        return view('show', ['order' => Order::find($id)]);
    }

    public function pickup(Client $client, Request $request, $id)
    {
        $order = Order::find($id);
        $order->status = 'Shipped';
        $order->notification_status = 'queued';
        $order->save();

        $callbackUrl = str_replace('/pickup', '', $request->url()) . '/notification/status/update';
        $this->sendMessage(
            $client,
            $order->phone_number,
            'Your laundry is done and on its way to you!',
            $callbackUrl
        );

        return redirect()->route('order.show', ['id' => $order->id]);
    }

    public function deliver(Client $client, Request $request, $id)
    {
        $order = Order::find($id);
        $order->status = 'Delivered';
        $order->notification_status = 'queued';
        $order->save();

        $callbackUrl = str_replace('/deliver', '', $request->url()) . '/notification/status/update';
        $this->sendMessage(
            $client,
            $order->phone_number,
            'Your laundry is arriving now.',
            $callbackUrl
        );

        return redirect()->route('order.index');
    }

    public function notificationStatus(Request $request, $id)
    {
        $order = Order::find($id);
        $order->notification_status = $request->input('MessageStatus');
        $order->save();
    }

    private function sendMessage($client, $to, $messageBody, $callbackUrl)
    {
        $twilioNumber = config('services.twilio')['number'];
        try {
            $client->messages->create(
                $to, // Text any number
                [
                    'from' => $twilioNumber, // From a Twilio number in your account
                    'body' => $messageBody,
                    'statusCallback' => $callbackUrl
                ]
            );
        } catch (Exception $e) {
            Log::error($e->getMessage());
        }
    }
}

Now let's look at how we set up the PHP Twilio REST Client.

Setting Up the Twilio REST Client

Here we create an authenticated Twilio REST API client that we can use anytime we need to send a text message.

We initialize the client with our Twilio account credentials stored as environment variables.  You can find the Auth Token and Account SID in the console:

Account Credentials

 

<?php
namespace App\Providers;
use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;
use Twilio\Rest\Client;

class TwilioRestClientProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    /**
     * Register the application services.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function register()
    {
        $this->app->bind(
            Client::class, function ($app) {
                $accountSid = config('services.twilio')['accountSid'];
                $authToken = config('services.twilio')['authToken'];
                return new Client($accountSid, $authToken);
            }
        );
    }
}

Next up, let's look at what we do with incoming notification triggers.

Handle Notification Triggers

In OrderController we extract the phone number stored in each order, and then simply send an SMS message with an appropriate message body.  Easy!

<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Http\Requests;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use App\Order;
use Twilio\Rest\Client;
use Log;

class OrderController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        return view('index', ['orders' => Order::all()]);
    }

    public function show($id)
    {
        return view('show', ['order' => Order::find($id)]);
    }

    public function pickup(Client $client, Request $request, $id)
    {
        $order = Order::find($id);
        $order->status = 'Shipped';
        $order->notification_status = 'queued';
        $order->save();

        $callbackUrl = str_replace('/pickup', '', $request->url()) . '/notification/status/update';
        $this->sendMessage(
            $client,
            $order->phone_number,
            'Your laundry is done and on its way to you!',
            $callbackUrl
        );

        return redirect()->route('order.show', ['id' => $order->id]);
    }

    public function deliver(Client $client, Request $request, $id)
    {
        $order = Order::find($id);
        $order->status = 'Delivered';
        $order->notification_status = 'queued';
        $order->save();

        $callbackUrl = str_replace('/deliver', '', $request->url()) . '/notification/status/update';
        $this->sendMessage(
            $client,
            $order->phone_number,
            'Your laundry is arriving now.',
            $callbackUrl
        );

        return redirect()->route('order.index');
    }

    public function notificationStatus(Request $request, $id)
    {
        $order = Order::find($id);
        $order->notification_status = $request->input('MessageStatus');
        $order->save();
    }

    private function sendMessage($client, $to, $messageBody, $callbackUrl)
    {
        $twilioNumber = config('services.twilio')['number'];
        try {
            $client->messages->create(
                $to, // Text any number
                [
                    'from' => $twilioNumber, // From a Twilio number in your account
                    'body' => $messageBody,
                    'statusCallback' => $callbackUrl
                ]
            );
        } catch (Exception $e) {
            Log::error($e->getMessage());
        }
    }
}

Next, let's look closer at how we send the SMS itself.

Send a SMS (or MMS) To the Customer

This code shows how we send the SMS with the Twilio PHP Client.

Better shown than said?  We agree - you can add an image of the order with the optional mediaUrl:

'mediaUrl' => 'http://lorempixel.com/image_output/fashion-q-c-640-480-1.jpg'

In addition to the required parameters (and optional mediaUrl), we can pass a statusCallback url to let us know if the message was delivered.

<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Http\Requests;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use App\Order;
use Twilio\Rest\Client;
use Log;

class OrderController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        return view('index', ['orders' => Order::all()]);
    }

    public function show($id)
    {
        return view('show', ['order' => Order::find($id)]);
    }

    public function pickup(Client $client, Request $request, $id)
    {
        $order = Order::find($id);
        $order->status = 'Shipped';
        $order->notification_status = 'queued';
        $order->save();

        $callbackUrl = str_replace('/pickup', '', $request->url()) . '/notification/status/update';
        $this->sendMessage(
            $client,
            $order->phone_number,
            'Your laundry is done and on its way to you!',
            $callbackUrl
        );

        return redirect()->route('order.show', ['id' => $order->id]);
    }

    public function deliver(Client $client, Request $request, $id)
    {
        $order = Order::find($id);
        $order->status = 'Delivered';
        $order->notification_status = 'queued';
        $order->save();

        $callbackUrl = str_replace('/deliver', '', $request->url()) . '/notification/status/update';
        $this->sendMessage(
            $client,
            $order->phone_number,
            'Your laundry is arriving now.',
            $callbackUrl
        );

        return redirect()->route('order.index');
    }

    public function notificationStatus(Request $request, $id)
    {
        $order = Order::find($id);
        $order->notification_status = $request->input('MessageStatus');
        $order->save();
    }

    private function sendMessage($client, $to, $messageBody, $callbackUrl)
    {
        $twilioNumber = config('services.twilio')['number'];
        try {
            $client->messages->create(
                $to, // Text any number
                [
                    'from' => $twilioNumber, // From a Twilio number in your account
                    'body' => $messageBody,
                    'statusCallback' => $callbackUrl
                ]
            );
        } catch (Exception $e) {
            Log::error($e->getMessage());
        }
    }
}

The message delivery status updates are interesting.  Let's zoom in on those next.

Handling a Twilio Status Callback

Twilio will make a post request to this controller each time our message status changes to one of the following: queued, failed, sent, delivered, or undelivered.

We then update this notification_status on the Order and your own business logic would take it from there. This is an excellent place to add logic that would resend the message in the case of a message failure, or send out an automated survey when there is a successful delivery to the customer.

<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Http\Requests;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use App\Order;
use Twilio\Rest\Client;
use Log;

class OrderController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        return view('index', ['orders' => Order::all()]);
    }

    public function show($id)
    {
        return view('show', ['order' => Order::find($id)]);
    }

    public function pickup(Client $client, Request $request, $id)
    {
        $order = Order::find($id);
        $order->status = 'Shipped';
        $order->notification_status = 'queued';
        $order->save();

        $callbackUrl = str_replace('/pickup', '', $request->url()) . '/notification/status/update';
        $this->sendMessage(
            $client,
            $order->phone_number,
            'Your laundry is done and on its way to you!',
            $callbackUrl
        );

        return redirect()->route('order.show', ['id' => $order->id]);
    }

    public function deliver(Client $client, Request $request, $id)
    {
        $order = Order::find($id);
        $order->status = 'Delivered';
        $order->notification_status = 'queued';
        $order->save();

        $callbackUrl = str_replace('/deliver', '', $request->url()) . '/notification/status/update';
        $this->sendMessage(
            $client,
            $order->phone_number,
            'Your laundry is arriving now.',
            $callbackUrl
        );

        return redirect()->route('order.index');
    }

    public function notificationStatus(Request $request, $id)
    {
        $order = Order::find($id);
        $order->notification_status = $request->input('MessageStatus');
        $order->save();
    }

    private function sendMessage($client, $to, $messageBody, $callbackUrl)
    {
        $twilioNumber = config('services.twilio')['number'];
        try {
            $client->messages->create(
                $to, // Text any number
                [
                    'from' => $twilioNumber, // From a Twilio number in your account
                    'body' => $messageBody,
                    'statusCallback' => $callbackUrl
                ]
            );
        } catch (Exception $e) {
            Log::error($e->getMessage());
        }
    }
}

That's a wrap (a fold?)!

We've just implemented an on-demand notification service that alerts our customers when their laundry order is arriving.  Let's take a look at other features that are easy to add with Twilio.

Where to next?

We've got a lot of great PHP content here on the Docs site but we've selected just a couple you might like to visit next:

Workflow Automation

Increase your rate of response by automating the workflows that are key to your business. In this tutorial, learn how to build a ready-for-scale automated SMS workflow for a vacation rental company.

Masked Numbers

Protect your users' privacy by anonymously connecting them with Twilio Voice and SMS. Learn how to create disposable phone numbers on-demand so two users can communicate without exchanging personal information.

Did this help?

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