Track Delivery Status of Messages in Java

In this short tutorial, we'll show you how to track the delivery status of messages you send with Programmable SMS in your Java web application. Twilio will notify you about the status of your SMS and MMS messages via a webhook, after which you can log this information or choose to send your delivery data back to Twilio.

The code snippets in this guide are written using Java and require Java JDK 8 or higher. They also make use of the Twilio Java SDK.

What is a Webhook?

Webhooks are user-defined HTTP callbacks. They are usually triggered by some event, such as receiving an SMS message or an incoming phone call. When that event occurs, Twilio makes an HTTP request (usually a POST or a GET) to the URL configured for the webhook.

To handle a webhook, you'll need to build a small web application that can accept HTTP requests.

Webhooks function the same for every Twilio application:

1. Twilio makes an HTTP request to a URI that you provide.
2. Your application performs whatever logic you feel necessary - read/write from a database, integrate with another API, or perform some computation.
3. Your application then replies to Twilio with a TwiML response with the instructions you want Twilio to perform.

Receive Status Events in your Web Application

Statuses for which you can receive notifications include:

• accepted
• queued
• sending
• sent
• failed
• delivered
• undelivered
• receiving
• received
• read (WhatsApp only)

For a full description of these and other message statuses, see the API reference documentation.

To get Twilio to call your webhook, you need to provide a URL to your application in the statusCallback parameter of each message for which you want the status callbacks.

Let's take a look an example of how you can specify this parameter. Typically, you would include a URL that points to your application. Here we'll use a RequestBin URL instead, so that we can easily inspect the webhook requests that Twilio sends:

To get this code sample to run, do the following:

1. Fill in your ACCOUNT_SID and AUTH_TOKEN (found in the Twilio Console dashboard)
2. Replace the to number (set first in the creator method) with your mobile number.
3. Replace the from phone number (set second in the creator method) with one of your Twilio numbers.

Next, head over to RequestBin, and create a new bin by clicking on the "public bin" link below the blue "Create Request Bin" button. Copy the new bin's URL, which is displayed near the top of the page. Replace the statusCallback parameter value in the snippet with the URL of your bin.

When you run the code, you should receive your text message. In addition, you should see at least one request come into your RequestBin's request list, with content similar to:

"AccountSid": "ACxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
"From": "+15017250604"
"MessageSid": "SM1342fe1b2c904d1ab04f0fc7a58abca9"
"MessageStatus": "sent"
"SmsSid": "SM1342fe1b2c904d1ab04f0fc7a58abca9"
"SmsStatus": "sent"

This request shows the MessageStatus of sent. Assuming all was successful, you should see that followed up by another request with a status of delivered (it may take a few minutes to show up).

Once you get the hang of how the status callback works, you're ready to handle the callback in your application.

Here's an example of how you might do this by logging the status for each message:

Get Status Events for TwiML Generated Messages

Replying to messages using TwiML? You can still track user actions via callback webhooks.

When you reply to an incoming message with the <Message> verb, you can also provide an action attribute to specify the URL for your callback webhook. The callback can be the same as those explored in the previous sections.

Provide Message Delivery Feedback to Twilio

From direct feedback from carrier partners to deliverability data from some larger customers, as well as various other monitoring techniques, Twilio has many sources of data that help optimize overall delivery deliverability. But nothing trumps the live collective data of our customers.

Twilio's Message Feedback API resource enables you to programmatically report back to Twilio critical deliverability information. Actions that indicate a message was received can then be used by Twilio to identify network issues and improve the deliverability of your messages. By looking at both aggregate data and data specific to your account, we have a better chance at improving the delivery of your messages.

Want to learn more? Check out this guide on how to send message delivery feedback to Twilio from your application.