php & twilio

1 PHP & Twilio, PHPNW 2011

PHP & TWILIOMichael Peacock, October, 2011


ABOUT ME

• Senior/Lead Web Developer• Web Systems Developer

• Telemetry Team – Smith Electric Vehicles US Corp

• Author• PHP 5 Social Networking, PHP 5 E-Commerce

Development, Drupal Social Networking (6 & 7), Selling online with Drupal e-Commerce, Building Websites with TYPO3

• PHPNE Volunteer• Occasional technical speaker

• PHP North-East, PHPNW 2010, SuperMondays, PHPNW 2011 Unconference, ConFoo 2012


NO. NOT MILK FLOATS (ANYMORE)

Photo courtesy of kenjonbro: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenjonbro/4037649210/in/set-72157623026469013


ALL ELECTRIC, COMMERCIAL VEHICLES.


SMITH ELECTRIC VEHICLES & TELEMETRY

• Worlds largest manufacturer of Commercial, all-electric vehicles

• Smith Link – on-board vehicle telematics system, capturing over 2500 data points each second on the vehicle and broadcasting them over mobile network

• ~400 telemetry enabled vehicles on the road• Worlds largest telemetry project outside of F1


Collection of “Infrastructure APIs”• Make and receive phone calls• Send and receive text messages• Buy phone numbers• Record caller messages• Conference calls• IVR: Interactive Voice Response• DTMF: Gathering number presses• Text to speech


SMITH, TELEMETRY & TWILIO

• Field Engineers• Phone up telemetry to see if a new device they have

installed in the field is broadcasting data• When in the field their access to laptop / Internet is limited• Gives instant feedback which is recorded by the system

• Customers• Proof of concept: Telephone access to telematics data

• Where is my truck? Geolocate• Current metrics: Battery, Current, Voltage, Temperature,

Speed• Can it get to...does the truck have enough charge to reach a

new destination

• Basic useful information for fleet managers away from their desks


APPLICATIONS

Potential use cases:• Verify customers phone number• Provide a telephone based entry point to your web

application• Let customers phone up to manage their account or track

their order on the move

• Lead generation• Numbers for lead sources to track conversions

• Customer service• When your contact form is submitted or an order placed,

automatically connect a member of your team to the customer

• Request a call back form


CONTROLLED THROUGH XML

• Caller dials your number

• Twilio calls your application, which returns XML instructions

• XML instructions dictate what Twilio should say, and where to send the user depending on their response


CONTROLLED THROUGH XML

Standard header:header('Content-type: text/xml');echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>';

• <Response>• <Gather>• <Say>• <Redirect>• <Dial>• <Play>• <Record>


API & PHP LIBRARY

• PHP Library simplifies the REST side of the API, including:

• Making calls

• Looking up transcripts

• Looking up call recordings

• Buying phone numbers

• Send SMS messages

• Control flow is handed through XML, which can be generated using the Twiml class of the PHP Library

• https://github.com/twilio/twilio-php

https://github.com/twilio/twilio-php


SANDBOX

• $30 free credit on sign up

• Sandbox number with access code

• Until you are ready to buy your own number, you can call their sandbox number, enter a PIN and it redirects to your application


PHONE NUMBERS

• $1 per month• Available for US, Canada and now (beta) UK• Buy online or through the rest API


MAKE A CALL

$client = new Services_Twilio(‘AC123', '123'); $call = $client->account->calls->create('FROM', 'CALL', 'http://mydomain.com/call-xml' );

Call ID is generated:$call->sid;

Length is recorded$call->length


SPEAK

<Say>Hello conference attendees</Say>

$response = new Services_Twilio_Twiml();$response->say(‘Hello conference attendees');echo $ output;


ASK FOR A RESPONSE

<Response><Gather action=“my-app-url/process"

numDigits="1"><Say>Welcome Conference PHP North

West 2011 Delegates.</Say><Say>For talks at 10 45 press 1.</Say>

</Gather><Say>Sorry, I didn't get your

response.</Say><Redirect>my-app-url</Redirect>

</Response>


ASK FOR A RESPONSE

$response = new Services_Twilio_Twiml();

$gather = $response->gather(array('numDigits' => 1));

$gather->say("Welcome Conference PHP North West 2011 Delegates.");

$gather->say("For talks at 10 45 press 1.");

$response->say("Sorry, I didn't catch that");

echo $response;


ACT ON A RESPONSE

$response = (int) $_REQUEST['Digits'];

header('Content-type: text/xml');echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>';Switch( $response ){

case 1:echo ‘<Response><Say>Track 1 details…</Say></Response>’break;case 2:echo ‘<Response><Say>Track 2 details…</Say></Response>’break;

}exit();


TRANSFER THE CALLER

<Dial>+44XXXXXXX</Dial>


ENFORCING STATE

Each stage of the application is accessible via a URL. Theoretically, someone could directly visit a deep link (if they know it) and see customer information.

• Simplest solution is to generate a unique token (with a short TTL) when caller first dials

• Token is then passed around to each <Redirect> response

• Any authentication details are associated with the token

• Tokens regularly cleaned up


TWILIO CONNECT

Lets you write Twilio applications, hosted and managed on your servers (free or charged for) but that connect directly to your customers Twilio account, so they can manage their own Twilio usage billing


TWIMLETS

• You don’t have to host code on your server

• If its a basic script, with no server interaction, you can use “twimlets” http://labs.twilio.com/twimlets/

• Forward calls• Ring up to 10 phones at once until one answers• Voice mail• Conference call• Etc

• Create them using an online wizard and Twilio hosts the XML

http://labs.twilio.com/twimlets/


DEBUGGING


DEMO APPLICATION

Call: 0161 8840908


REALLY BASIC DEMO APPLICATION<?php$twilio = new TwilioDemo();class TwilioDemo{

public function __construct(){

header('Content-type: text/xml');echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>';

$route = ( isset( $_GET['route'] ) ) ? $_GET['route'] : '';

switch( $route ){

case 'process':$this->process();break;

default:case '';

$this->menu();break;

}}

Based on the URL, redirect the user

REALLY BASIC DEMO APPLICATION

Read the menu, if no response selected, repeat

private function menu(){

$out = <<<EOD<Response> <Gather action="http://www./twiliodemo/twiliodemo.php?route=process" numDigits="1"> <Say>Hello PHP North West Conference attendee. At Nine Thirty we have the keynote from Ian Barber, How

to Stand on the Shoulders of Giants.</Say> <Say>For talks at 10 45, press 1.</Say> <Say>For talks at 11 45, press 2</Say> <Say>Lunch is at 12 45</Say> <Say>For talks at 2 press 3.</Say> <Say>For talks at 3, press 4.</Say> <Say>For talks at 4 30, press 5.</Say> <Say>For un conference talks, press 6.</Say> </Gather>  <Say>Sorry, I didn't get your response.</Say> <Redirect>http://www..co.uk/twiliodemo/twiliodemo.php?route=main</Redirect></Response>

EOD;echo $out;exit();

}



private function process(){$selection = (int) $_REQUEST['Digits'];switch( $selection ){case 1:$this->ten45();break;case 2:$this->eleven45();break;case 3:$this->two();break;case 4:$this->three();break;case 5:$this->four30();break;case 5:$this->unconference();break;default:$this->oi();break;}}

Process based on the user input



Read out the information

private function ten45(){

echo '<Response>';echo '<Say>Track 1: Zend Framework 2 - State Of The Art :

Enrico Zimuel.</Say>';echo '<Say>Track 2: REST and HATEOAS - A Case Study :

Ben Longden.</Say>';echo '<Say>Track 3: Magic Behind the Numbers - Software

Metrics In Practice : Sebastian Marek.</Say>';echo

'<Redirect>http://www.invoicecentral.co.uk/twiliodemo/twiliodemo.php?route=main</Redirect>';

echo '</Response>';}


CONCLUSION

• Twilio is really, really easy to use

• Build a simple application in a minute

• Build a complex application in five

• You control the responses through a new request after each user interaction

• Really cheap to use


Q & A

Michael PeacockWeb Systems Developer – Telemetry Team – Smith Electric Vehicles US [email protected]

Senior / Lead Developer, Author & [email protected] www.michaelpeacock.co.uk

@michaelpeacock

http://joind.in/3819 http://www.slideshare.net/michaelpeacock

php & twilio

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