Twilio is a cloud communications platform that was founded in 2007 and is based in San Francisco. It allows a user/developer to make/receive phone calls programmatically and send/receive text messages using web service APIs. For this chapter, we shall only be demonstrating its messaging function; however, we request and anticipate that the reader will extend the functionality of this skill by adding the phone call functionality as a homework exercise.
To configure Twilio as our messaging backend, we shall be following these steps:
- Please navigate to www.twilio.com in your web browser, as seen in this screenshot:
Fig 3.4: Twilio landing page
- Please click on
Get a free API key
orSign up
(both will start the sign-up process for a new user) to land on theSign up for free
page shown here:
Figure 3.5: Twilio sign-up page
Please fill in your personal details. As shown in the previous screenshot, there is a small questionnaire towards the bottom of the page,...