Twilio is all about HTTP endpoints & webhooks. From responding to incoming SMS, to controlling the flow of a voice call to blocking unwanted chat messages with an onMessageSend webhook, chances are that you'll end up writing an HTTP endpoint for the Twilio product you're interacting with. Twilio Functions allow you to write and host those endpoints directly in the Twilio cloud while relying on the power of Node.js.

What if you want to develop these functions with your IDE or editor of choice and run them locally? What if something goes wrong and you want to use your debugger to dive deeper into it? For this reason I built twilio-run, a command-line tool that allows you to run your Twilio Functions in your local environment. 

Let's dive into how it works, and how it can help your development flow with Twilio.

Last week at SIGNAL 2018, we debuted v4 of our venerable hardware badge that we lovingly call the Hackpack.

This year’s Hackpack was our most advanced yet. Sporting a joystick, 7 buttons, a touchscreen, a massive battery, and Linux on a Raspberry Pi Zero W, we hoped to craft the perfect badge for both our conference and your next handheld computing project.

We also designed it with a special goal in mind: to release under an open hardware license. That’s why today we’re proud to announce the hardware collateral and assembly instructions are available under the Solderpad 2.0 license.

Go to the hardware repository now.

Building Twilio’s Hardware Badge

We designed and built v4 of the Hackpack using version 5 of KiCad. And even if you never fire up KiCad, you can take the gerbers to your favorite PCB house and (with a fair bit ...

If you're working on an urgent project in GitHub with other developers, it's handy to get immediate notifications by SMS. However, there is no SMS option out of the box! So I said, “Enough is enough; I'll start my own notification system!”

In this tutorial, I'll walk you through the steps of building out the beginnings of a notification system for GitHub pull requests. More specifically, we will use the GitHub and Twilio APIs in Python to send texts notifying you when a new pull request has been submitted.

Getting Started

First, we have to set our environment up. This guide was written in Python 3.6. If you haven't already, download Python and Pip. Next we will install virtualenv to create and activate your virtual environment by entering the followings command in your command-line:

If you can set up a project server once, you can set up Jenkins to deploy that project again and again as you develop, maintain, and expand it.

In this post we will set up a multi-stage deploy server and the Jenkins jobs we need for continuous delivery. By the end you will know how to set up a server and Jenkins jobs to automatically deploy successfully built branches into each environment.

In a previous post we set up a dedicated Jenkins Server and gave it access to our projects’ GitHub account with an SSH key.

We will use a PHP project as an example, but we’ll also talk about how these same steps can be used to deploy most web projects regardless of language, framework, or other considerations.

Tools

In order to follow along with this post, you will need the following:

• A PHP project with a repository ...

A deploy process should provide consistency, incorporate tests, and utilize a multi stage deploy process to protect your production server, provide useful logging, catch breaking changes quickly, and integrate smoothly with your version control software.

There are a few options available for managing a deploy process like this. Many of these are managed services which means much of it is opaque and outside your control. If you’re like me, you’d rather have total access to and control of your deploy chain. The best option for control freaks like us, is Jenkins.

This post will walk through creating a dedicated Jenkins server and setting it up with an SSH key on your GitHub account.

Tools

Moving forward this post will assume a few things about you and your project:

• Your projects host their repositories on GitHub.
• You have a DigitalOcean account. You can create one here.
• You have some ...

We’ve all been there, alternating between JIRA and a blinking cursor wondering “What does this API even look like?”

That question is the bane of productivity and a spoiler of successful cross-team collaboration. Attempts to consume anything other than a perfectly documented API hit speed-bumps, if not  complete show-stoppers.

You may have heard of Swagger, OpenAPI Initiative‘s API specification language. With Swagger, we can write a specification file as well as consume it programmatically via tools like Swagger Editor, swagger-api/swagger-codegen, or anything capable of reading and verifying JSON Schema. Today we’re proud to introduce guardrail, a framework for providing principled code-generation in type-safe languages and frameworks.

API Documentation: progress over perfection

One challenge for a microservice is to adhere to its contracts. As we’ve already seen, it’s possible to document the overall structure of an API fairly accurately. Given that fact, how do we ...

Earlier this year, we released the Rapid Response Kit (RRK), a set of open source tools built for disaster relief efforts. The RRK lets first responders deploy much needed communication apps in minutes.

The community response was incredible with developers offering their contributions to the project. Most recently the RRK was deployed by the Rhode Island Code for America fellows for the Providence Student Union to rally support through SMS broadcast on changing legislation around free bus passes for students.

Today, we have two new capabilities in the RRK including a brand new tool and a one-click hosting addition that makes it even easier to deploy.

One-click Deploys with Heroku Button

The RRK includes tools that require full hosting in order to send and receive calls or messages. The recent launch of Heroku Button fits right in with our open source tools, and is perfect for those looking to quickly ...

In disaster recovery situations communications technologies are essential for rescue teams in the field, people in need of help, or connecting with family members to make sure they are ok. Many times these tools are built on the spot based on needs and sometimes the final apps aren’t deployed in time for the people that really need them.

What if there were simple tools that any developer or organization could deploy at a moment’s notice? What if these tools were open source and powered by the community? We started the Twilio.org initiative to support nonprofits better through technology and amplify their efforts with communications. Today is our first step in cultivating open source resources for disaster relief and nonprofit needs.

Meet the Twilio.org Open Source Rapid Response Kit, Fork it Now

From emergency response to community organization, we built the basic communications apps you need so ...

Some of you may have noticed Twilio’s shiny new API Status page at http://status.twilio.com.  We’re excited to announce that Twilio finally has a modern status page and not only that, we open source it!  Yup, you too can download the code and host your own SaaS or API status page. Learn more at http://www.stashboard.org.

Introducing Stashboard

Stashboard is a status dashboard for APIs and software services. It’s similar to the Amazon AWS Status Page or the Google Apps Status Page. Businesses and individuals have come to rely on hosted APIs and cloud service providers for email, CRM, sales, phones and more, however, many have poor or non-existent status pages.  Enter Stashboard!

Stashboard is designed to provide a generic status dashboard for any hosted service or API. The code can be downloaded, customized, and run on any Google App Engine account ...