BabySMS

BabySMS is a Ruby interface to a decent collection of SMS service providers. With it, you can fire and forget SMS messages, or script entire two-way SMS conversations. All without tying yourself to a single provider.

The interface stays the same, So you can comparison-shop for prices or reliability.

BabySMS allows multiple services to be used at once for failover, or random selection of a provider for load-balancing (against throttling.)

Add these lines to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'YourAPIProviderGem' # see below
gem 'babysms', '~> 0.5'

BabySMS.adapter = BabySMS::Adapters::SomeAdapter.new(...)

BabySMS::Message.new(to: '+1 555-555-5555', contents: 'Hello, World!').deliver

If you need just basic outgoing functionality, that's all there is to it.

BabySMS.adapters = [
  BabySMS::Adapters::HooliAdapter.new(...),
  BabySMS::Adapters::PiedPiperAdapter.new(...)
]

# BabySMS.strategy = :in_order # this is the default
BabySMS::Message.new(...).deliver

This will try HooliAdapter first, but if it fails, PiedPiperAdapter. Changing the strategy to :random will go through the list randomly, providing something akin to load-balancing.

BabySMS::Message#deliver can directly accept an adapters: keyword argument that overrides the global adapters list in BabySMS.adapter[s].

BabySMS will attempt delivery with each adapter until one succeeds, or will raise BabySMS::FailedDelivery once exhausted.

#deliver returns a BabySMS::Receipt. This allows you to inspect (and log) adapters that failed along the way to delivery. Use #exceptions? to discover if something is failing, and #exceptions to see the list of failed deliveries before the successful one.

Note: This functionality is currently being implemented.

API providers report incoming messages to you by accessing a publicly-available URL. This means you have to have a web server running on the open internet to receive and process incoming messages

BabySMS::WebApplication is a Rack (Sinatra) application that does just that.

# config.ru
require 'babysms'
require 'babysms/web_application'

# Replace this with your service provider as listed below
BabySMS.adapter = BabySMS::TestAdapter.new

# Publicly-accessible URL
BabySMS.web_hook_root = "https://example.com/_babysms"

BabySMS.inbox = BabySMS::Inbox.new do
  receive do |message:|
    puts "Incoming message from #{message.from}:\n"
    puts "  > #{message.contents}"

    # Replies with same number/adapter, regardless of strategy
    message.reply(contents: "Thank you for your message.")
  end
end

run BabySMS::WebApplication.new

You'll need to secure the web-application against the general public, allowing only your SMS providers to access them.

TODO: Explain exactly how to do that with Rack

TODO: Write about mounting BabySMS::WebApplication in routes.rb, sending messages via ActiveJob, etc

Each adapter uses the terminology of the service provider for configuration. E.g., api_key vs. auth_token, etc. Other than TestAdapter, they all share a common from initialization parameter to specify the number you're sending from.

You can configure multiple adapters (even instances of the same adapter class with different configurations) by assigning BabySMS.adapters or using the adapters: argument to Message#deliver.

Adapters require external gems to interface with their respective services. You will have to require these gems yourself, and before babysms: BabySMS enables functionality by feature- detecting these gems.

Putting it before babysms in your Gemfile should work.

The built-in testing adapter. It stores outgoing texts in its outbox. It prints colorful lines to stderr when a message is sent for development purposes. It is the default adapter.

verbose: controls if it displays the outgoing SMS to stderr. fails: determines if deliveries will fail.

BabySMS::Adapters::TestAdapter.new(verbose: true, fails: false, from: '15555555555')

Requires the ruby-bandwidth gem.

BabySMS::Adapters::BandwidthAdapter.new(user_id:, api_token:, api_secret:, from:)

Requires the twilio-ruby gem.

BabySMS::Adapters::TwilioAdapter.new(account_sid:, auth_token:, from:)

Requires the nexmo gem.

BabySMS::Adapters::NexmoAdapter.new(api_key:, api_secret:, from:)

Requires the plivo-ruby gem.

BabySMS::Adapters::PlivoAdapter.new(auth_id:, auth_token:, from:)

Requires the signalwire gem.

# Notice the capitalization, to be consistent with their SDK naming
BabySMS::Adapters::SignalwireAdapter.new(from:, project:, token:, space_url:)

BabySMS was written by Mike A. Owens mike@filespanker.com

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.