Sending SMS Text Messages From Twilio Using ColdFusion

Great post. It seems odd to pass your username and password plain text in the http request using http. Why would you ever want to use http?

Cool. Have yourself a good weekend getting married, becoming a warrior, mastering jQuery, working out, becoming selfless or whatever else it is that you're doing.

hello bro, I've downloaded it and now trying on my localhost.. :)
thx for sharing..
hope we can be a friend.. :D

This is great. Thanks for taking the time to explain. There is an interesting problem. Everything works if you send a single word or string without a space; however if you send a sentence the text does not get processed by twilio. i.e Message = "Test" or "Help" works perfectly within the code, if you send "Help Me" or any other sentence construct it does not process. Any thoughts?

Matt,
I solved the issue where spaces in the message body were breaking things by simply adding charset="utf-8" to the cfhttp code as follows:

<cfhttp
	result="post"
	method="post"
	charset="utf-8"
	url="#twilioSMSResource#"
	username="#twilioUsername#"
	password="#twilioPassword#">

I also updated the URL in the SMSResource to the newer API as follows:

<cfset twilioSMSResource = (
	"http://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01" &
	"/Accounts/#twilioUsername#/SMS/Messages"
	) />

Hope this helps!

Hi Sir Ben, i was about to incorporate this idea to my thesis study, how can i buy twilio phone numbers here in the philippines... i was creating enrollment system with sms technology, students will receive text messages at the end of every semester containing their final grades... Thank you for your kindness..

respectfully yours,
sam

This works for a single text message, but what about if you want to send it to multiple numbers store in a database table?

I tried querying my db table with the store numbers and wrapping the <cfhttp> tag with the cfoutput query like this but nothing happens upon executing the page.

<cfoutput query="staff">

<cfhttp
result="post"
method="post"
url="#twilioSMSResource#"
username="#twilioUsername#"
password="#twilioPassword#">

.....

</cfoutput>

This is great stuff Ben, but like Omar, I was having some trouble with sending out a mass message to a database of cell numbers (ie - people signed up to receive a text when a ballgame is cancelled).

#1. If you're not using the statuscallback, don't use it... it's optional anyhow. If you're using an invalid statuscallback and you're cflooping through a query you'll send all your texts to the same person because your callback is trying to do it's job and can't. I honestly don't need to know if a text was or was not received, so I just put the site's domin in that field as a default value... not a good idea; remove the field altogether. For more info on sending SMS:
https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/rest/sending-sms

#2. For some odd reason, cflooping over a query for each RESTful cfhttp takes a long time... like my submission was timing out after 43 texts. I have over 100 in the database so this was a problem. Overriding the default timeout value as such:

<cfsetting requesttimeout="600">

fixed my problem. And although the client still hangs/loads while it completes the task, at least it's sending everyone the text. I just wish there was a way around this... like including all the phone numbers you want to send the same message to in the same RESTful post to Twilio. If there's a way to do this I've yet to figure it out. Bear in mind that Twilio also does not simultaneously send out texts. The numbers will enter a queue and send out at a maximum pace of 1 per second, which is perfectly fine for what I'm using it for.

Also, just wanted to point out something to save anyone else from trying:

<cfhttpparam type="formfield" name="To" value="#valueList(query.column, ",")#" />

A comma delimited list does NOT work when sending mass texts. you will need to loop through each request, one by one:

<cfloop query="yourQuery">
<cfhttp result="post" method="post" charset="utf-8" url="#twilioSMSResource#" username="#twilioUsername#" password="#twilioPassword#">
	<cfhttpparam type="formfield" name="From" value="#twilioFrom#" />
	<cfhttpparam type="formfield" name="To" value="#getNumbers.phoneNumber#" />
	<cfhttpparam type="formfield" name="Body" value="Little League games for today have been cancelled. DO NOT REPLY TO THIS NUMBER." />
</cfhttp>
</cfloop>

Hi Ben,

I've been using a version of your code to send SMS text messages for an onboarding app I built for our HR department (using CF and Twilio), and it's been working amazingly well - thank you!!

I'm now trying to use Twilio to send text to phone - the gist is, I need to send a 7-digit code from my web app to an employee's desk phone, using Twilio voice. I'm not having much luck with the sparse documentation on the Twilio side, and am wondering if you've had any experience you might be willing to share on this.

Thanks for all you do!

Ohmygosh, I got it! Will share if anyone requests. Ben, love your autoreply to this post. :)

Thank you, Ben, for this information, and for being in every google listing of every search query I have ever made about ColdFusion. No matter what CF problem I am trying to solve, I find that, not only have you already solved it, you've made a post to show other people how to do it.

You are my ColdFusion hero.

Thank you.