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OpenShift QuickStart SMSGroup

This repository is an OpenSHift QuickStart for the SMSGroup application.

It uses the OpenShift Python-2.6 language cartridge, the OpenShift MongoDB-2.0 database cartridge, and requires the API credentials of a Twilio account.

It provides a SMS "broadcast group", similar to Group.me and Swaggle.mobi.

Quickstart

  1. Create an account at http://openshift.redhat.com/ and then install the rhc client tool.

  2. Create a Python application and attach a MongoDB to it.

    rhc app create -a smsgroup -t python-2.6
rhc app cartridge add -a smsgroup -c mongodb-2.0

  3. Add this upstream repo.

    cd smsgroup
git remote add upstream -m master git://github.com/fallenpegasus/openshift-smsgroup.git
git pull -s recursive -X theirs upstream master

  4. Add your Twilio credentials and information. It may be possible to use a Twilio demo account or sandbox, but instructions for doing that are left as an exercise for the reader.

    1. Log in to your Twilio.com account.

    2. Browse to https://www.twilio.com/user/account to get the "Account SID" and the "Auth Token".

    3. Browse to https://www.twilio.com/user/account/phone-numbers/incoming and click "Buy a Number". Go through the process.

    4. Edit the twilio_creds file, and set the account, token, and fromnum.

      # change these to your Twilio account credentials
twilio_account = "ACyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy"
twilio_token = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
twilio_fromnum = "+12024561414"

    5. And then commit those changes to Git.

      git add twilio_creds
git commit -m "set twilio creds"
# after you have done this, you MUST not push this repo to a public Git server!

  5. Then push the repo into OpenShift.

        git push

  6. Now attach this app to Twilio.

    1. Browse to https://www.twilio.com/user/account/apps

    2. Click on "Create TwiML App".

    3. Set the Friendly Name to "openshift-smsgroup".

    4. Set the SMS Request URL to http://smsgroup-mynamespace.rhcloud.com/twilio/sms (Remember to change "mynamespace" to your own OpenShift namespace.)

    5. Set the SMS Request URL Schem from "POST" to "GET".

    6. Click on "Save Changes".

    7. Browse to https://www.twilio.com/user/account/phone-numbers/incoming

    8. Click on the number you just bought.

    9. Set the SMS Application to "openshift-smsgroup".

    10. Click on "Save Changes".

  7. That's it, you can now use your SMS Group!

Using your SMS Group

  • To join the group, SMS the word ".join" to the phone number. It will respond with ".ok".

  • To leave the group, SMS the word ".leave" to the phone number. It will respond with ".ok".

  • To send a message to the group, just SMS the message to the phone number. It will be broadcast to everyone who's joined.

  • You do not have to be a member of the group to send a message to it.

  • A limitation imposed by Twilio is that SMSs are sending rate limited to one per second.

Costs

If you use a US NANP number, with no international messaging, Twilio will charge you USD1.00/month for the phone number, and USD0.01 per SMS sent and received.

For example, if you have ten people in the group, it will cost eleven cents every time someone sends it a message. One cent for the incoming. And one cent for each of the ten outgoing messages.This is in addition to whatever your cellphone carriers are charging for texting.

MongoDB

You can access the MonogDB instance by either installing the RockMongo 1.1 cartridge, or by ssh'ing into the application gear, and then running the "mongo" command on the command line.

ssh [email protected]
[smsgroup-matwood.rhcloud.com ~]\> mongo
MongoDB shell version: 2.0.2
connecting to: 127.11.100.129:27017/admin
> use smsgroup
switched to db smsgroup
> show collections

The "twiliolog" collection is a log of all the Twilio REST calls that have been issued to this application, with all the assocated parameters.

The "member" collection is all the current members of the group. The _id of each record is the E.164 in +1XXXXXXXXX form of the member.

The "sendq" collection is queue all the messages that are about to be transmitted. This will usually be empty, unless you are really fast on the draw. The records in this collection will have fields named "To" and "Body". The application does not try to sort this collection as it removes records from it, so if you have a large group with lots of traffic, messages may start being send out of order.

Missing Features

If you want to implement any of these, please fork this project here on GitHub, add the feature, and issue a GitHub pull request. I will review your code and then merge it. Thank you.

  • The app should interrogate the Twilio API and discover it's own phone number, instead of needing it manually set.

  • There needs to be a better way to tell the app the Twilio credentials. OpenShift itself needs better handling of this sort of thing.

  • A web UI would be nice. It could show the current members, the history of members joining and leaving, and the history of messages send.

  • Members should be able to set their name when they join.

  • Messages should be prefixed with the name and/or number that orginated them.

  • The ".join" and ".leave" commands should not be case sensitive.

  • The sendq should sort messages so they are not sent out of order.

  • Authenticate the REST call so we know it's not some joker with curl calling us, or someone who configured their own Twilio account to call our own running instance.