Twilio Send reply not hitting provided URL - laravel

Question

I have configured Twilio phone number and given settings as per the documentation. On the callback URL i have written code like this
Route::post('/replyMessages', function(){
Log::info('inside reply messages URL');
$response = new \Twilio\TwiML\MessagingResponse();
Log::info(print_r($response, true));
$message = $response->message("Testing sms from twilio to staffing backbone");
print_r($response);
Log::info('SMS reply URL callback');
});
When user is replied from their mobile nothing is happening. If URL hits the log, then it will print the text given but not working. Kindly help me on this.
As per one of the document in Twilio they are expected to install ngrok is that necessary in order to call our URL? documentation link

Answer 1

ngrok is not explicitly required, it's just recommended as an easy way to make your local development environment accessible from outside of your network.
If the code is running on your local development machine, ensure that you able to query that endpoint from a device outside of your network (eg, from a mobile phone with wifi turned off). If not, ngrok will help with this.
If the code has been deployed to a server that is already publicly accessible, query it and ensure there are no errors being output.
Original answer (related to code snippet):
Try switching out print_r($response); with echo $response;.
print_r will be outputting the structure of the MessagingResponse object, whereas echo will cast your $response to a string and output the XML payload that Twilio is expecting.
Your current payload probably looks something like this:
Twilio\TwiML\MessagingResponse Object
(
[name:protected] => Response
[attributes:protected] => Array
(
)
[children:protected] => Array
(
[0] => Twilio\TwiML\Messaging\Message Object
(
[name:protected] => Message
[attributes:protected] => Array
(
)
[children:protected] => Array
(
[0] => Testing sms from twilio to staffing backbone
)
)
)
)
=> true
But Twilio will be expecting an XML payload as below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Response><Message>Testing sms from twilio to staffing backbone</Message></Response>

Answer 2

Since it's a POST request, I'm guessing the VerifyCsrfToken middleware is stopping this request.
Add 'replyMessages' to the $except array in app/Http/Middleware/VerifyCsrfToken.php file, so it should end up like this:
<?php
namespace App\Http\Middleware;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Http\Middleware\VerifyCsrfToken as Middleware;
class VerifyCsrfToken extends Middleware
{
/**
* Indicates whether the XSRF-TOKEN cookie should be set on the response.
*
* #var bool
*/
protected $addHttpCookie = true;
/**
* The URIs that should be excluded from CSRF verification.
*
* #var array
*/
protected $except = [
'replyMessages'
];
}

Answer 3

As per checking my configuration is correct and there is some problem in the Twilio.
The initial mobile which we have tried for sending replies and it is recording log and everything works but it is not triggered the callback URL. Later we have tried to reply from new mobile number it worked. Nothing changed in the configuration. So following up with Twilio on the resolution.
Thanks all for the help.