CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railstwilio
Matthew Berman
Matthew Berman

Reputation: 8631

how to associate received sms messages (via twilio) to specific user in my rails app

I'm making an app that sends text messages to a group of people and then people can respond to the text. I want to be able to record the response, know who sent it, and associate it with the user who sent the original message. I've gotten the sending working, and I've begun putting together receiving sms messages but i'm confused. If twilio sends a post request to my server with the from number and message, how will I know which of my users sent the original message?

what if two different users send a message to the same person around the same time? what's the best way to handle this? do I need a separate 'to' number for each of my users? seems like that would get quite expensive. also, if each user has multiple campaigns (messages), how would I associate a response to a specific campaign?

i'm building a rails app.thanks

Upvotes: 2

Views: 889

Answers (1)

beanserver
beanserver

Reputation: 652

You'll want to use a different Twilio number for each contact a user sends to. This will establish a unique mapping between the 2 mobile devices and a Twilio number. This allows you to forward incoming messages sent to the Twilio number back to the appropriately mapped mobile phone. You'll do the lookup on your mapping based on who the incoming message is From.

You won't need a Twilio number for every one of your users, but you will need a pool of numbers which is the maximum number of contacts a single person can make.

There is an article on Twilio's site which gives additional information:

https://www.twilio.com/help/faq/sms/how-can-i-have-users-send-text-messages-to-each-other-over-twilio

Upvotes: 3

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