September 2018 Summaries

A Python script using Flask, Twilio SMS, and Trello APIs creates an application that responds to incoming text messages with a randomly selected "To-Do" item from the user's Trello board. The script starts by setting up the environment, including installing necessary packages, creating a virtual environment, and authenticating with the Trello API. It then defines a function `get_todo_item()` that extracts To-Do items from the user's Trello board and returns one randomly chosen item. The Flask server is set up to respond to incoming text messages with the selected To-Do item. The application can be extended by integrating additional logic, such as calculating the length of neglected tasks.

This article guides beginner Python developers in creating a Twitter bot using Python, Tweepy, and PythonAnywhere. The Twitter bot tweets random quotes from a Random Quotes API service. The development environment is set up with virtualenv, Requests library, Tweepy, json, and time modules. The bot's code is divided into two functions: one to get quotes from the API endpoint and another to post quotes on Twitter using Tweepy. The bot is tested by running the script from the command line and deployed to PythonAnywhere for cloud deployment.

This tutorial explains how to send SMS reminders from a PHP Symfony application using Twilio's SMS service. The process involves setting up a database, creating entity models for users and appointments, seeding the database with sample data, installing and configuring Twilio's SDK, creating a command to execute the sending of SMS messages, and scheduling the command to run at a specific time daily. The tutorial assumes familiarity with Symfony and provides instructions on how to install dependencies, configure the application, and test the SMS feature.

The author, a self-taught PHP developer, recounts their journey from building their first website at 15 to starting and eventually losing their web design startup. They reflect on the life lessons they learned from "The Lion King," particularly Mufasa's explanation of the "circle of life" and its relevance to being born to help others. After experiencing a loss, they rediscovered their purpose by realizing they could teach others how to code, leading them to join Twilio as a PHP Developer for Technical Content.

Public key cryptography`, also known as asymmetric cryptography, is a fundamental building block for protecting data and applications. It uses two keys: a public key to be shared with others and a private key to be kept secret. The public key can encrypt messages that only the corresponding private key can decrypt, while the private key can sign messages that can be verified using the public key. This encryption method is used in various scenarios such as SSH, TLS, Bitcoin, PGP, and GPG, and is also employed by Twilio in its Verify API for push authentication and SHAKEN/STIR call spoofing prevention. The security of public-key cryptography relies on trapdoor functions, which are calculations that are easy to do in one direction but hard to reverse unless a key is provided. RSA is a common algorithm used in public-key cryptography, with key sizes impacting its security strength. To ensure the security of public-key cryptography, it's recommended to use well-established libraries and frameworks that implement accepted encryption schemes, rather than rolling one's own crypto.

Twilio Programmable Voice` combines with `Google Analytics` to create an easy call tracking system. The system allows users to track the impact of marketing efforts on lead generation and sales by capturing call tracking metrics in Google Analytics. The system is designed to tie a phone number to a campaign, forward calls to the actual phone number, map the country code of the caller to a geo-location, and report to Google Analytics using the tracking ID of the account created. The results can be viewed in the Google Analytics account, including the location of the caller, accumulated results of call tracking, and impact of marketing efforts on lead generation and sales.

The Web Audio API is a powerful browser API for creating, manipulating and analyzing audio. The application uses React to create a user interface that allows users to access their microphone and visualize the audio data on a canvas. The audio analysis is performed using the Web Audio API's AnalyserNode, which breaks down the audio signal into frequency bins and provides a visual representation of the sound wave. The visualization is updated in real-time as new audio data is received from the microphone. The application demonstrates how to access the microphone, setup the Web Audio API, analyze audio, and visualize it on a canvas using React.

The tutorial extends a Flask web application with APIs to programmatically gather or distribute data. The API creation process is simplified by creating a set of routes that receive requests and return useful data. An example is created for the "I Love Dogs" site, which has sections organized by topics. A RESTful API endpoint is built to return a list of resources related to a specified topic. The API uses PyYaml to read in .yml files and convert them into Python dictionaries. To handle malicious users and invalid topic types, error handling mechanisms are implemented, such as returning a 404 response when the requested data cannot be found. The tutorial concludes with the final API endpoints and testing.

To build a Twilio-hosted group messaging service with sync, functions, and SMS, one can use Twilio's services to manage their own group SMS application. This allows users to communicate quickly and effectively with friends, colleagues, or customers using an SMS app on any mobile phone. The implementation is managed using the Twilio Console, with no developer skills required, and involves creating a Twilio Function, Messaging Service, Notify service, and Sync service to manage the member list. Testing the application involves sending messages to the group phone number and testing user subscriptions and broadcasts. The configuration steps are detailed in the Owl Group SMS GitHub repository, and the implementation can be expanded to create multiple groups using separate Twilio phone numbers and services.

This tutorial explains how to create a simple SMS translator using Azure Functions, Twilio, and the Fun Translations API. To start, users need to set up an Azure account, Twilio account, and SMS-enabled Twilio number. Then, they create an Azure Function app, add a custom function with C# code, and enable NuGet packages for dependencies. The code uses the Fun Translations API to translate incoming SMS messages into pirate speak. The tutorial also covers how to handle rate limits from the Fun Translations API and provides guidance on using Azure Functions for small sections of code that can be reused across projects.

Creating animations in iOS using Swift involves understanding the UIKit Animations API, which has two implementations: `UIView.transition(with:)` and `UIView.transition(from:)`. The former allows for more control over the transition process, while the latter automates some aspects. To use these APIs, developers need to understand concepts such as view hierarchy, triggers, and predefined transitions. By following a step-by-step guide, developers can create simple animations that transition between views, including flipping, curling, and dissolving effects. The tutorial project demonstrates how to implement these animations using Swift and Xcode, providing a starting point for further exploration of iOS animation techniques.

This tutorial guides beginners through building a smart auto-response bot using Python, Flask, Twilio SMS, and the CleverBot API. To get started, users need to set up a Twilio account with an SMS-capable phone number and obtain a CleverBot API key, which is free for the first month. Next, they create a virtual environment for their project and install necessary libraries. The tutorial then walks through creating a Flask app that texts CleverBot with incoming messages from Twilio, using its API to generate responses. Finally, users use ngrok to expose their local server's URL to the public, allowing Twilio to access it, and run their Flask app to test the auto-response bot.

Twilio has welcomed Ytica, an analytics-driven workforce optimization (WFO) software company, to its team as part of its cloud contact center application platform Twilio Flex. Ytica's WFO software provides organizations with complete control over their data and full visibility into their operations, helping solve common problems in the contact center such as unactionable data and high agent attrition. The integration of Ytica's analytics-driven WFO solution into Twilio Flex aims to provide contact centers with a powerful technology to manage performance, quality, and customer experience, offering real-time feedback to agents and highly customizable reporting capabilities. With this addition, Twilio continues to promote the value of customization for enterprise software and offers its customers a unified view of their customer interactions, enabling informed decisions to optimize their contact center operations.

By Greg Baugues, published on September 7th, 2018, SIGNAL conference is an event where developers can learn Twilio from its developers, use their powers to do good, see Jeffiel livecode, enjoy a party experience that goes beyond the usual conference after-parties, and possibly connect with OK Go. The conference features over 40 technical talks, a full day of hands-on training, and a SuperClass session on Day 0 for in-depth Twilio training.

This article guides readers on how to integrate Twilio's Verify API into a Ruby on Rails application to verify user phone numbers, with the goal of mitigating fraud and ensuring that users are real people. The process involves setting up an environment with Ruby 2.5.0, PostgreSQL, and the Authy gem, which abstracts Twilio's API. The article then walks through building a simple login action with phone verification, including implementing a `valid_phone_number?` method to determine if a submitted phone number is valid, and adding a form for users to enter a verification code sent via SMS. After verifying the user's phone number, the application updates the user's record in the database to indicate that they have been verified, providing a more secure authentication process.

The author of this article created a Python script using Twilio SMS and ComEd's Hourly Pricing API to receive text alerts when the electricity price rises above a certain threshold. The script fetches real-time data from the API, calculates the average hourly price, and sends an SMS alert if the price exceeds the threshold. The script is triggered by a Windows Task Scheduler task that runs every 5 minutes, allowing the author to monitor their electricity prices in real-time and adjust their usage accordingly.

A widely-used open-source library, libphonenumber-csharp, provides extensive resources for validating and manipulating phone numbers of all types. It's derived from an open source library created by Google. The .NET frameworks provide limited capabilities for validating phone numbers, particularly with respect to internationalization ("i18n"). A common design pattern in software built with C# and the .NET frameworks uses class objects to store data. Data validation is abstracted into validation attributes which are used to "decorate" the properties of entity classes. The libphonenumber-csharp library provides a convenient way to implement phone number validation in .NET projects, making it easier to handle standard data types more robustly. Phone numbers are permitted to be expressed with digits and characters like "-", ".", "(", and ")", plus an extension marked with "ext.", "ext", or "x". The library can validate whether the potential phone number is valid in a specific country. It's also possible to use the PhoneNumberUtil class to determine the type of phone number, format for dialing from a mobile phone in another country, and more. The libphonenumber-csharp library provides robust functionality for handling standard data types like phone numbers, making it easier to build secure and user-friendly software applications.

The Twilio API for WhatsApp abstracts away the complexity of directly integrating with the WhatsApp network, allowing developers to focus on their apps without worrying about the plumbing. The API provides a gateway that utilizes multiple abstraction and normalization layers, enabling the dynamic routing of messages to the messaging channel's APIs. This setup enables quick integration with new channels, such as LINE, which only required a few days' work by a single Twilio engineer. However, integrating with WhatsApp presented unique challenges due to its end-to-end encryption nature, requiring a "device" with a unique phone number and keys for encryption and decryption. The Twilio API for WhatsApp abstracts away the need to build and run infrastructure for managing these containers at scale, providing access to Facebook Messenger, LINE, RCS, and Programmable Messaging APIs. It also gives developers reusable dynamic components, reducing the time it takes to add more channels in the future.

A Python script uses the GitHub and Twilio APIs to send notifications via SMS when new pull requests are submitted. The script creates a class called `PullNotifs` that authenticates with GitHub and Twilio, collects all repos and their number of pull requests, checks for new pull requests, and sends a notification if one is found. The script uses an object-oriented approach and includes methods to get all repos, set the number of pull requests, check for new pull requests, and send notifications. The script can be run in a loop to continuously monitor pull requests and send notifications as needed. With this script, developers can stay on top of their GitHub pull requests and receive notifications via SMS when new ones are submitted.