SMS and MMS Notifications with Java and Spark

Today we'll look at a Spark sample application that demonstrates how to send SMS alerts to your system administrators when something goes wrong on your server. We'll do a deep dive on all of the plumbing so you can see how easy it'll be to add notifications to your own application.

See how EMC uses Twilio SMS to send IT alerts to 68,000 employees.

Let's get started!

Click the button below to move to the next step of the tutorial.

List Your Server Administrators, and Whomever Else

Here we create a JSON list of administrators who should be notified if a server error occurs.

The only essential piece of data we need is a phone_number for each administrator.

Next, let's take a look at configuring the Twilio REST Client.

Configuring the Twilio REST Client

To send a message we'll need to initialize the TwilioRestClient defined in the Twilio Java Helper Library. It requires reading a TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID and TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN from environment variables.

The values for your account SID and Auth Token will be in the Twilio console:

Click the eyeball to show your Auth Token to copy and paste.

Next up, we will look at how to handle application exceptions.

Handling the Application Exceptions

In a Spark application, we can handle exceptions of a configured type for all routes and filters by using exception mapping. This is also where we'll eventually loop through the list and send our alerts.

Now let's look at how to create a custom message for our notifications.

Create a Custom Alert Message

Here we create an alert message to send out via text message.

You might also decide to include a picture with your alert message and make it an MMS. Perhaps a screenshot of the application when the crash happened? An 'Everything is Okay' meme image?

Let's move forward and look at loading the list of administrators.

Reading the Administrators from a JSON File

Next, we read the admins - and any other lucky people - from our JSON file. We use the Gson Java library to convert our JSON text file into Administrator objects.

And next, we will see how to send a text message.

Sending a Text Message

There are three parameters needed to send an SMS using the Twilio REST API: From, To, and Body.

US and Canadian phone numbers can also send an image with the message. Other countries will have the image URL automatically shortened and appended to the body.

And that's a wrap!

We've just implemented an automated server notification system for Java and Spark that can push server alerts if anything goes wrong.

Let's see what else you can do with the Twilio Java SDK, next.

Where to Next?

We love Java here at Twilio. Here're just a couple more examples of using our Java SDK to easily add some features in your application:

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Appointment Reminders

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