Sending SMS Messages With Ruby

[James Edward Gray II]

I'm going to need to send SMS messages from a Ruby server I am
building currently. I just thought I would ask if anyone here has
any experience doing that and would recommend a library, web service,
web site I can mechanize, or whatever. Any tips appreciated.

James Edward Gray II

 

[Sean Bryant]

I'm going to need to send SMS messages from a Ruby server I am building
currently. I just thought I would ask if anyone here has any experience
doing that and would recommend a library, web service, web site I can
mechanize, or whatever. Any tips appreciated.

James Edward Gray II

Most Cellphone providers will let you send SMS via email. Check with the
providers for the email address. I do it all the time.

 

[James Edward Gray II]

Most Cellphone providers will let you send SMS via email. Check
with the providers for the email address. I do it all the time.

Thanks for the tip. This did help.

Looking into this means and Google's simple service:

http://www.google.com/sendtophone

it seems I need to know the provider in either case. Is this always
true?

James Edward Gray II

 

[James Edward Gray II]

Thanks for the tip. This did help.

Looking into this means and Google's simple service:

http://www.google.com/sendtophone

it seems I need to know the provider in either case. Is this
always true?

This service seems to allow me to do it generically:

http://www.teleflip.com/

James Edward Gray II

 

[Jan Svitok]

I'm going to need to send SMS messages from a Ruby server I am
building currently. I just thought I would ask if anyone here has
any experience doing that and would recommend a library, web service,
web site I can mechanize, or whatever. Any tips appreciated.

One option is to connect a phone/modem/data card to the server
directly, and use that to send the messages. Most phones provide a
serial port to communicate, and sending SMS is a matter of a few AT
commands (with a few quirks, as usual). It depends on what kind of
messages you want to send (text only/binary/unicode).

Advantages:
- you can send messages to any number your operator is able to send
- you don't need to rely on some third party gateway
- might be more flexible (on some modems you can deliberately set the
sender number even to a text)

Disadvantages:
- may be more expensive compared to email gateways (depending on your
subscription)
- the need for hardware
- more work (though a library/tool for the communication may exist, I
don't know)

Anyway, I would consider this as a last resort, when there is no
sufficient email gw available.

 

[Martin Boese]

we are using smstools (http://smstools.meinemullemaus.de/) with a serial
cellphone attached to the server.
It works very well, a daemon (smsd) is periodically checking on an outbox
folder (/var/spool/smsd/outbox) and my program is simply writing textfiles
into it. The format of these files is simply:

 

[Dr. D]

Kannel is a pain to configure, but once it's up it will send to urls,
so you can back end it with your favorite ruby web framework. It will
communicate over the net via smpp, or over serial/usb/bluetooth/etc
with a phone you've attached to the computer. Finding a phone that
supports sms over serial correctly is another matter.

http://www.kannel.org/

Kannel is the heavy artillery approach. If you're just trying to let
yourself know a process crashed, I'd stick to email.

 

[Rob Sanheim]

This service seems to allow me to do it generically:

http://www.teleflip.com/

James Edward Gray II

I've used teleflip before just to send to friend's cell phones from my
email, when I don't want to figure out what provider they are on. It
works well enough, though teleflip adds some subject-line type stuff
that may look strange in the recipients cell phone. They have been
around awhile so it seems to be a service that is going to stick
around for awhile...

- Rob

 

[Erik Hollensbe]

we are using smstools (http://smstools.meinemullemaus.de/) with a
serial cellphone attached to the server.

Just to add to this, you are at the complete mercy of the destination
provider if you use their email gateway. For a while I did this w/
nagios, but the latency between send and arrival on my provider was so
high that I was just wasting money (on several levels).

All the ISPs that I know of use the quoted solution (or something very
similar), and if time is critical (which it generally is with these
sorts of things), you may want to seriously explore that option.

-Erik