twiliodeved / send-sms-during-inbound-calls-node

Learn how to send an SMS to someone who's called your Twilio phone number while they're on the call

Send an SMS during a phone call. Powered by Twilio and Node/Express

This template is part of Twilio CodeExchange. If you encounter any issues with this code, please open an issue at github.com/twilio-labs/code-exchange/issues.

About

Learn how to send an SMS to someone who's called your Twilio phone number while they're on the call.

This small sample application will say a short message to an inbound caller and, at the same time, send them an SMS. This project is built with Nodejs and Express and the Twilio Node Helper Library.

Read the full tutorial here!

Implementations in other languages:

.NET	Java	Python	PHP	Ruby
Done	Done	Done	Done	Done

Set up

Requirements

• Nodejs v10 or v12

Twilio Account Settings

This application should give you a ready-made starting point for writing your own application. Before we begin, we need to collect all the config values we need to run the application:

Config Value	Description
TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID	Your primary Twilio account identifier - find this in the Console on project settings.
TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN	Used to authenticate - just like the above, you'll find this here on project setting.

Local development

1. First clone this repository and cd into it.

   git clone https://github.com/TwilioDevEd/send-sms-during-inbound-calls-node.git
   cd send-sms-during-inbound-calls-node

2. Install the dependencies.

   npm install

3. Copy the sample configuration file and edit it to match your configuration.

   cp .env.example .env

   See Twilio Account Settings to locate the necessary environment variables.

4. Start the server, the following command will run the application on port 8000.

   npm start

5. Expose the application to the wider Internet using ngrok. This step is important because the application won't work as expected if you run it through localhost.

   ngrok http 8000

6. Configure Twilio to call your webhooks.

   You will need to configure Twilio to call your application when calls are received in your Twilio Number. The Voice URL should look something like this:

   https://0f72e8a8.ngrok.io/answer
   

7. Call your Twilio number to test it out.

That's it!

Docker

If you have Docker already installed on your machine, you can use our docker-compose.yml to setup your project.

1. Make sure you have the project cloned.
2. Setup the .env file as outlined in the Local Development steps.
3. Run docker-compose up.
4. Follow the steps in Local Development on how to expose your port to Twilio using a tool like ngrok and configure the remaining parts of your application.

Tests

You can run the tests locally by typing:

npm test

Cloud deployment

Additionally to trying out this application locally, you can deploy it to a variety of host services. Here is a small selection of them.

Please be aware that some of these might charge you for the usage or might make the source code for this application visible to the public. When in doubt research the respective hosting service first.

Service
Heroku

Resources

• The CodeExchange repository can be found here.

Contributing

This template is open source and welcomes contributions. All contributions are subject to our Code of Conduct.

Visit the project on GitHub

License

MIT

Disclaimer

No warranty expressed or implied. Software is as is.

send-sms-during-inbound-calls-node's Issues

Code Exchange quality checklist

The purpose of this checklist is to assess the state of this repository, and bring it to an acceptable level for long-term support by completing the tasks listed below.

This checklist is used internally but can be used as a guidance for others

Please check every part of this checklist for us to process your request. You can do this by marking them with [x] instead of [ ].

Documentation

• LICENSE file exists in repository

• Code of Conduct exists in repository

• CONTRIBUTING exists in repository

• No broken links in README.md

• Build status exists at top of README.md

• Set up steps are complete and accurate

• CodeExchange repository is linked in README.md

GitHub

• Dependabot set up

• Dependabot automerge set up

• Uses GitHub Actions (required for Twilio sample) or other CI

Code

• Packages/dependencies are up to date

• Code compiles against latest packages/dependencies

• Matches CodeExchange Guidelines to the best of ability

Tests

• Functionality tests have been created

• All tests pass

App

• Confirmed sample behaves as expected (after dependencies have been updated)

• This file has been copied into a wiki entry for the respective repository or added as a GitHub issue

General

• App is released under a permissive license like MIT or Apache-2

• I've read and followed the contribution guidelines

• I've read and implemented my template according to the respective coding guidelines for my project

• I agree and adhere to the Code of Conduct

• The template has been authored by me / or my organization and will be kept up-to-date. If the template will not longer be maintained, I'll notify this project.