Starting on a RapidSMS Tutorial

[Dan Poirier]

We're starting work on a RapidSMS tutorial, similar to the Django tutorial.

Here are my initial thoughts about what steps we might break a tutorial down into:

1) Start a new RapidSMS project. Set up message tester. Write a minimal app that responds to a message. Put it through its paces.

2) Configure the default app with a custom response. Recreate the minimal app from step 1, this time using a handler. Demonstrate keyword and pattern handlers.

3) It's probably time to actually send and receive messages to telephones. Tropo has free development accounts and there's a Tropo backend at https://github.com/caktus/rapidsms-tropo. Walk through adding that to the project. Set up a Tropo development account. Demo the test app from step 2, this time using real messages.

Thoughts?

Dan Poirier
<dpoi...@caktusgroup.com>

[evan wheeler]

Sounds great. I really like the idea of walking through adding a functional backend for testing, but I'm not sure that tropo will work for folks outside of north america and europe -- https://www.tropo.com/docs/scripting/international_dialing_sms.htm

 It'd be great to include a really simple web report too -- perhaps just some summary figures and a simple line chart of incoming responses.  

[mugisha moses]

You should also add a virtualbox+vagrant installation option 

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[Dan Poirier]

On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 5:05 PM, evan wheeler <evanmw...@gmail.com> wrote:

I really like the idea of walking through adding a functional backend for testing, but I'm not sure that tropo will work for folks outside of north america and europe -- https://www.tropo.com/docs/scripting/international_dialing_sms.htm

​I was worried about that. Does anyone know an alternative to Tropo that might work for a tutorial?  Should be free for developers (or at least low cost) and available more globally.

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Dan Poirier <dpoi...@caktusgroup.com>

[Victor Miclovich A. K.]

I don't know much about the reach of Twilio or Clickatell (say there is testing for up to 10 messages, but it looks like a web form where one just sends a message). Perhaps if we reached out to them and suggest a testing sandbox for at least up to 10 messages.

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[Victor Miclovich]

http://blog.plivo.com/post/45362689649/free-plivo-developer-accounts-for-life {that looks promising as well, I am yet to play with it to see if it can be used for "tutorial" purposes for people trying to a take a sniff at rapidsms}

[Dan Poirier]

I'm a little puzzled by this. The blog post seems to largely say what you can't do with the free account. Maybe if I already know what services Plivo offered, I'd be able to infer what was left that I could do, but as it is, I don't know.

Also, the link to a "tutorial" at the end of the post seems instead to go to a photo of some people on a roller coaster :-)

Does anyone on the list know more about Plivo?

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Dan Poirier <dpoi...@caktusgroup.com>

On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 6:14 PM, Victor Miclovich <vicmic...@gmail.com> wrote:

http://blog.plivo.com/post/45362689649/free-plivo-developer-accounts-for-life {that looks promising as well, I am yet to play with it to see if it can be used for "tutorial" purposes for people trying to a take a sniff at rapidsms}

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[Victor Miclovich A. K.]

plivo is a kind of "twilio"

[evan wheeler]

yeah. its an open-source twilio competitor that offers hosted (paid) plans too

[Jeff Wishnie]

Plivo is two things—the commercial SaaS and the underlying open source project (which you can deploy yourself or integrate into your own applications to get Plivo voice functionality): http://www.plivo.com/framework/

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Jeff Wishnie

[Dan Poirier]

It looks like Twilio might be a good candidate. It has a free development account like Tropo - even better, you don't have to provide a credit card before you can send outgoing messages on the free account.  And they can deliver messages all over the world. Unfortunately the only African country they have local numbers for is South Africa, but this still seems like the best I've seen so far.

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Dan Poirier <dpoi...@caktusgroup.com>

[Victor Miclovich A. K.]

I agree, but what I don't like is their confirmation code process, for example, getting sent to Uganda takes ages (at least 30 minutes), after which the transaction times out and they expect you refresh and get another code sent! {this is the confirmation that every new account that is setup on Twilio has to go through). I don't know about the alternatives to that confirmation :-(