The Twilio platform makes it simple to integrate telephony—both calls as well as SMS and MMS messages—into your code without expensive hardware requiring a manual setup. However, getting started on such a powerful platform can be daunting.
This book will teach you how to build powerful real-time applications on the Twilio platform from start to finish, making use of phone calls and SMS messages. You'll be introduced to TwiML, the REST API, and Twilio Client before you start building two real-life applications and diving deeper into issues such as testing and security.
Chapter 1, Working with TwiML, covers TwiML, which is Twilio's XML-based language, that directs how Twilio handles incoming calls and SMSes and places outgoing calls. The actions in TwiML are called verbs, and we'll look at all of them and how they're used.
Chapter 2, Exploring the REST API, takes you through interacting with the data in your Twilio account, as well as placing calls and sending SMS messages. You'll learn how to set up the PHP API library, how to interact directly with the API using a tool called Postman, and how to use the API's most useful features.
Chapter 3, Calling in the Browser with Twilio Client, introduces Twilio Client, which is a way of making and receiving phone calls directly within your applications, in a browser or mobile app, without using a physical phone. You'll discover how this works at a high level and how to practically implement it in your code.
Chapter 4, Twilio in the Real World, takes you through building two real Twilio applications: a callback request tool for your website and a simple conference calling service with fully explained code samples.
Chapter 5, Twilio in your language, goes beyond the PHP code we've used in most of the book, showing how to download and configure Twilio's API libraries for Ruby, Python, C#, Java, Node, and Salesforce.com.
Chapter 6, Securing your Twilio App, helps you keep your application and Twilio credit secure with two-factor authentication on your Twilio account. We will verify that the requests you're receiving really come from Twilio and will set up a circuit breaker to detect bugs and account misuse.
Chapter 7, Testing, Debugging, and Deploying Twilio Apps, explains how to test your apps before you release them into the wild and then how to monitor and maintain them later using the App Monitor and Request Inspector.
Chapter 8, Online Resources, contains some helpful links to help you get the most from this book and follow Twilio's best practices.
For this book, you'll need a computer with a text editor and a web browser. You'll also need a web server to run PHP code. You can use a paid hosting provider (see Chapter 8, Online Resources, for recommendations) or set this up on your own computer.
If you'd like to run a PHP-compatible web server on your own computer:
On Windows, Microsoft's PHP on Windows installer is the simplest way to get started. Refer to http://www.microsoft.com/web/platform/phponwindows.aspx.
On Mac OS X, PHP comes bundled with the OS but needs some simple setup. Refer to http://php.net/manual/en/install.macosx.bundled.php for instructions.
On other Unix and Linux operating systems, there are a range of ways to set up PHP. Refer to http://php.net/manual/en/install.unix.php for a list of some of the options.
If you're a developer in any programming language looking to get started with integrating Twilio into your applications, or if you're hoping to perfect your skills after already trying Twilio, then this book is for you.
This book will provides full code samples in PHP, JavaScript, and HTML, but it will be useful no matter what language you choose to use, showing you how to structure your applications, plus how and where to interact with Twilio.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "The <Play> verb lets you play audio."
A block of code is set as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <Response> <Say>Twilio Best Practices is number one!</Say> </Response>
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
<p>
access this conference, participants should dial
<your phone number here> and use access code {{
$conference->access_code }}.
</p>Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
composer require "watson/validating:0.10.*"
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Once you've got your number, head back to the Numbers screen and click on the one you've just bought."
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