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How To Create GIF Polls With Wedgies and Twilio MMS

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October 08, 2014
Written by
Kyle Kelly-Yahner
Twilion

This post is part of Twilio’s archive and may contain outdated information. We’re always building something new, so be sure to check out our latest posts for the most up-to-date insights.

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Wedgies delivers polls wherever you need them. That could mean a scoreboard poll at the NCAA finals, a reader poll on USAToday.com, or a nice little embedded poll on Tumblr. The folks at Wedgies have been there and done that. Now they’re bringing their gif-laden polls to the small screen – your phone.

In this post, Wedgies all-star/co-founder Jimmy Jacobson will show you how to use Twilio MMS create your own poll that you can share and vote on, all with a simple text.

Check out Jimmy’s tutorial below and fork it here.

 

Creating a GIF Poll using Twilio MMS and Wedgies

Store your Wedgies API key in an environment variable and reference in a global variable.
 

var WEDGIES_API_KEY = process.env.WEDGIES_API_KEY;

 

This is the express route to handle the incoming Twilio SMS
 

app.post('/', function(req, res, next) {

 

This function is defined below, and returns a Wedgies Poll from the Wedgies API or an error object that can be passed to the Express function next.
 

getWedgiePoll(function(error, poll) {
        if (error) {
            return next(error);
        }

 

Make sure your Twilio credentials are stored in environment variables.
 

var client = new twilio.RestClient(process.env.TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID,
        process.env.TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN);

 

Prepare the MMS message with a to, body and from fields.
 

// Now, get the parameters POSTed from our form:
        var twilioMessage = {
            to: req.body.From,
            body: poll.text + " " + poll.urls.page,
            from: process.env.TWILIO_NUMBER
        };

 

If the Wedgies poll has an image, make it an MMS!

if (poll.images && poll.images.questionImage) {
            twilioMessage.mediaUrl = poll.images.questionImage.url;
        }

 

Send the MMS using Twilio’s awesome NodeJS client library

// Now let's send the message! This is going back to Twilio, not to your user
        client.sendMessage(twilioMessage, function(error, messageData) {
            if (error) {
                // Remember, errors are not strings
                var err = new Error(error);
                err.status = 500;
                return next(err);
            } else {
                res.status = 201;
                res.send('Message sent! SID: ' + messageData.sid);
            }
        });
    });
});

 

This is the function that hits the Wedgies API and returns a poll
 

function getWedgiePoll(callback) {

 

Here is actual API call using Request

var requestOptions = {
        url: "https://api.wedgies.com/question?limit=1",
        headers: {
            "wedgies-api-key": WEDGIES_API_KEY
        },
        json: true
    };

    request.get(requestOptions, function(error, response, body) {

 

This is a pet peeve of mine. Use objects for errors, not strings. Here we handle the case where the request flat out fails. This could be due to a bad URL or similar.

if (error) {
            // An error is not a string, let's use an error object
            var err = new Error(error);
            err.status = 500;
            return callback(err);
        }

 

Here we handle the case where the Wedgies API call is successful, but the response code is something other than 200

if (response.statusCode != 200) {
            var err = new Error("Not 200, Not OKAY");
            err.status = response.statusCode;
            return callback(err);
        }

 

Finally, everything looks good, return the poll.

return callback(null, body);
    });
}

 

That’s it! Take a look a deeper dive into Wedgies’ platform here

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