CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vb.netwinformstwilio
user1716234
user1716234

Reputation: 1

How to receive an Inbound SMS using Twilio in VB.NET WinForms?

I have a WinForms application and I want to receive inbound SMS using Twilio. I am using VB.NET. The code that I find on the Twilio website are using web application and MVC. Can anyone help me how to use it in WinForms?

Did not get enough to try out anything.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 299

Answers (1)

Swimburger
Swimburger

Reputation: 7164

Twilio uses a standard way of notifying your service, called webhooks. When an SMS, phone call, or something else happens, and you configure a webhook for that, Twilio will send HTTP requests to the URL configured as a webhook. Diagram showing how SMS messages interact with Twilio and your application This does mean that you have to have a publicly running web server that can accept those HTTP requests with the details of the SMS, phone call, etc. That's why the samples will use ASP.NET, as this is only possible with web technology.

Winforms runs on your computer and doesn't expose any public web endpoints to receive the webhook HTTP requests, so you can't receive it directly. However, depending on your use-case, you have options.

If you don't need real-time updates, you can read the message history using the Twilio C# .NET SDK. In your winforms app, you could add a button to refresh the messages on click. Alternatively, you could query the message X amount of seconds to give it a more real-time feel, even tho it's not really real-time.

Warning: to use the Twilio API to get the messages, you'll need to embed the Twilio credentials into your Winform app. Anyone that has access to your app will be able to read those credentials. Keep that security risk in mind!

The second option is to use ASP.NET to receive the webhook HTTP requests, and then use a SignalR or websockets to notify any connected clients, of which your winform app would be one. For example, when Twilio receives an SMS, the ASP.NET application receives the webhook HTTP request, the ASP.NET app then send the SMS details to all clients connected to your SignalR hub, and then your Winforms app receives the SMS payload which you can use to render your app.

The second option is a lot more work and requires more infrastructure since the ASP.NET app needs to be hosted somewhere. We don't have a tutorial for that, but I'd be happy to forward more links to docs etc. if you have questions.

Upvotes: 1

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