Twilio Cookbook

Over 60 easy-to-follow recipes ranging from walking you through key features of Twilio’s API to building advanced telephony applications

Overview

• Teaches software developers to programmatically make and receive phone calls and send and receive text messages using Twilio’s web service APIs
• The only book that teaches you how to set up your own conference calling system or how to build a PBX for your company, or how to build a local solution that can tell you the weather where you are
• Part of Packt’s Cookbook series: Each recipe is a carefully organized sequence of instructions to complete the task as efficiently as possible

In Detail

Have you ever wanted to integrate phone features into a project you were working on? Maybe you wanted to send SMS messages to your customers about the latest sales? Maybe you want to set up a company directory with voice mail? Or maybe you want to add two factor authentication to your web sites to verify your users? Since Twilio was launched in 2007, developers have had a way to do these tasks. The power of Twilio’s API is huge and lets you add any type of phone solution to your web site from 2-factor authentication for verifying your users, to setting up a company directory and a voice mail system. The possibilities are endless.

“Twilio Cookbook” is your Swiss army knife for Twilio development, providing you with a number of clear step-by-step exercises. It helps you take advantage of the real power of the Twilio API, and gives you a good grounding in using it in your websites. This book looks at the Twilio API, and breaks down the mystery and confusion that surrounds adding telephone functionality to your websites. As you go through the recipes, you will learn how to take advantage of the Twilio API quickly and painlessly.

You will learn how to build your own IVR system, company directory, and voicemail box, and also how to set up a 2-factor authentication system to verify users, track orders via SMS, send surveys using SMS, allow users to buy phone numbers, set up and delete sub-accounts, and check to see if a human is answering a phone call. We will also combine Twilio with other APIs to build a handy local search system such as a local business search, movie listings search, and web search. If you want to take advantage of using Twilio’s API to add telephone functionality to your websites, then this book is for you.

“Twilio Cookbook’ will leave you with a black belt in Twilio development and enable you to integrate the API into your websites.

What you will learn from this book

• Add 2-factor authentication to your web apps to verify your users
• Set up a company directory
• Buy a phone number
• Conduct surveys using SMS
• Set up a conference calling system
• Use APIs to build a local search system for finding businesses, movies, and weather forecasts
• Delve into SMS messaging and learn how to set up order tracking, bulk SMS sending, and a group chat system
• Set up an appointment reminder using SMS
• Build an interactive IVR menu system
• Build your first PVR
• Learn about OpenVBX plugins to extend its existing functionality
• Verify that a person is answering the phone and not a machine

Approach

This book is a practical, hands-on guide that provides the reader with a number of clear, step-by-step exercises.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Into the Frying Pan
Chapter 2: Now We’re Cooking
Chapter 3: Conducting Surveys via SMS
Chapter 4: Building a Conference Calling System
Chapter 5: Combining Twilio with Other APIs
Chapter 6: Sending and Receiving SMS Messages
Chapter 7: Building a Reminder System
Chapter 8: Building an IVR System
Chapter 9: Building Your Own PBX
Chapter 10: Digging into OpenVBX