I'm working on a YRS 2013 project and would like to use Twilio. I already have a Twilio account set up with over $100 worth of funds on it. I am working on a project which uses an external API and finds events near a location and date. The project is written in Ruby using Sinatra (which is going to be deployed to Heroku).
I am wondering whether you guys could guide me on how to approach this scenario: a user texts to the number of my Twilio account (the message would contain the location and date data), we process the body of that sms, and send back the results to the number that asked for them. I'm not sure where to start; for example if Twilio would handle some of that task or I would just use Twilio's API and do checking for smss and returning the results. I thinking about not using a database.
Could you guide me on how to approach this task?
I need to present the project on Friday; so I'm on a tight deadline! Thanks for our help.
They have some great documentation on how to do most of this.
When you receive a text you should parse it into the format you need
Put it into your existing project and when it returns the event or events in the area you need to check how long the string is due to a constraint that twilio has of restricting messages to 160 characters or less.
Ensure that you split the message elegantly and not in the middle of an event. If you were returned "Boston Celtics Game", "The Nut Cracker Play". you want to make sure that if both events cannot be put in one message that the first message says "Boston Celtics Game, Another text coming in 1 second" Or something similar.
In order to receive a text message from a mobile device, you'll have to expose an endpoint that is reachable by Twilio. Here is an example
class ReceiveTextController < ActionController
def index
# let's pretend that we've mapped this action to
# http://localhost:3000/sms in the routes.rb file
message_body = params["Body"]
from_number = params["From"]
SMSLogger.log_text_message from_number, message_body
end
end
In this example, the index action receives a POST from Twilio. It grabs the message body, and the phone number of the sender and logs it. Retrieving the information from the Twilio POST is as simple as looking at the params hash
{
"AccountSid"=>"asdf876a87f87a6sdf876876asd8f76a8sdf595asdD",
"Body"=> body,
"ToZip"=>"94949",
"FromState"=>"MI",
"ToCity"=>"NOVATO",
"SmsSid"=>"asd8676585a78sd5f548a64sd4f64a467sg4g858",
"ToState"=>"CA",
"To"=>"5555992673",
"ToCountry"=>"US",
"FromCountry"=>"US",
"SmsMessageSid"=>"hjk87h9j8k79hj8k7h97j7k9hj8k7",
"ApiVersion"=>"2008-08-01",
"FromCity"=>"GRAND RAPIDS",
"SmsStatus"=>"received",
"From"=>"5555992673",
"FromZip"=>"49507"
}
Source
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Hi I'm looking for a way to store user session/metadata with the least amount of latency and that will not cost me an arm and a leg.
Brief problem description.
I have a bot that helps users download files from Google Drive.
It uses a Webhook of an AWS lambda function.
Users are provided with clickable filenames, e.g.
/File.pdf
Once they click on it, it needs to be downloaded and sent to the user.
The problem is I need a way of knowing what file the user chose without having to use a database or iterating through all my files by name.
E.g. Is there a way of adding metadata to the clickable message? Such that I can add that metadata to the clickable and if a user clicks /File.pdf, I'll be able to extract the metadata.
You can send InlineKeyboardButton like in this example and set in callback_data whatever you need. When user clicks on that button - your bot will receive that data in update:
button_list = [
InlineKeyboardButton("File1.pdf", callback_data="https://drive.google.com/invoice.pdf"),
InlineKeyboardButton("File2.pdf", callback_data="https://drive.google.com/presentation.pdf"),
InlineKeyboardButton("File3.pdf", callback_data="https://drive.google.com/report.pdf")
]
reply_markup = InlineKeyboardMarkup(button_list)
bot.send_message(chat_id=chat_id, "Files list:", reply_markup=reply_markup)
# in update handler:
def some_update_handler(update, context):
url = update.callback_query.data
# ...
# further processing
This can be also useful in any other case when Telegram bot user should see some nice message, but shouldn't see some internal value sent to Telegram bot.
We are using Amazon Connect, Lex and Lambda to create a phone bot. One use case we have is that we need to put the user on hold while we find information in other systems. So the conversation will be something like this:
- bot: hi, what can I do for you?
- user: i want to make a reservation
- bot: wait a minute while I fetch information about available rooms
... after 5 seconds ...
- bot: I found a free room blah blah
I don't see a way to send the wait a minute... message and keep control of the conversation. How can we achieve that?
You can accomplish this inside a single Lex bot by setting the intent to be fulfilled by a lambda function, the response of the function would play a message saying “please wait” and then chain another internet to perform the search using the data from the original intent.
See this link for information about sharing data between intents.
You can chain or switch to the next intent by passing the confirmIntent dialog action back in the lambda response. See this link for more information on the lambda input and response format.
You can use wait block in aws connect https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/adminguide/flow-control-actions-wait.html
By using this block you can set time to 5 secs . after time expired you can play prompt.
This is a very common problem typically when we want to do backend lookups in an IVR. The problem is lex does not provide any means to just play prompts.
One way to do it is:
Create a dummy slot in your intent (the reservation intent from your example above) with any type (e.g. AMAZON.NUMBER), we don't really care what the value is in this slot
From the lex code-hook for the intent, return ElicitSlot for this dummy slot with prompt as "Wait a minute while I fetch available rooms... "
If you do only this much, the problem you will face is that Lex will expect input from caller and will wait for around 4 seconds before passing control back to the Init and Validation Lambda, so there will be unnecessary delay. To overcome this, you need to set timeout properties as session attribute in "Get Customer Input" block from connect.
Property1:
Lex V2 Property name: x-amz-lex:audio:start-timeout-ms:[intentName]:[slotToElicit]
Lex Classic Property name x-amz-lex:start-silence-threshold-ms:[intentName]:[slotToElicit]
value: 10 (or any small number, this is in millseconds)
Property2:
Only available in Lex Classic, to disable barge-in on Lex V2, you can do it for required slot from lex console
Property name: x-amz-lex:barge-in-enabled:[intentName]:[slotToElicit]
Value: false
If barge-in is not disabled, there is a chance user may speak in middle of your "Please wait..." prompt and it will not be played completely.
Official documentation for these properties:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/adminguide/get-customer-input.html
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lexv2/latest/dg/session-attribs-speech.html
Another way:
Whenever such a prompt needs to be played, store the lex context temporarily either as a contact attribute after serialization, or if too big in size to be stored as contact attribute in a store like dynamodb.
Return control back to connect, play the prompt using 'Play prompt' module in connect. To give control back to bot, you will need invoke a lambda to re-initialize Lex with the full lex context again- using PostText API and then again passing control to same bot using 'Get Customer Input'
I have implemented option1 and it works well. You can even create cover-prompt which gets played if the backend lookup takes longer than expected. The actual lookup could be delegated to another lambda so that the code-hook lambda can continue doing customer interaction ever x (say 5) seconds to keep them informed that you are still looking up information.
What is the proper xmpp4r way to know if a given contact is online before sending them a message?
Can you post sample xmpp4r code for doing this?
Here is my use case:
If contact online, send :normal message
Else, email contact
Here are things I have working code for:
Send messages of various types
Get a roster/contact list
Register a call back to detect changes in presence
However, I can't find a place that directly addresses a work flow like this:
Loop through each JID in your roster
If jid.is_online? == true, send IM
Else, send email
I've read that you should send a JID a message of type :headline and if that fails, you know the user is offline. In my tests, if the user is ONLINE, they'll receive a message of type headline. This is suboptimal, as users should only receive messages to read, not noise to determine online status.
I've read that on sign on, all of your contacts will bounce a presence status back at you, and that status is the sole indication that they are online - assuming that there isn't a disconnect or presence change you've yet to receive. So you should register a presence call back, record the initial users who ping you back, and then add or remove from the list based on your running roster presence callback.
If this is truly the way to do it:
Can I get some example code of how to collect all the "I'm here" presence confirmations on sign on via xmpp4r?
Why, oh why, was xmpp designed this way and why is this better than offering an "is_online_and_available" method?
So the answer here is adding a message call back and checking inside the block for the type:
m = Message.new(to, body)
cl.send(m)
cl.add_message_callback do |m|
if m.type == :error
puts "type: #{m.type}"
else
puts "not an error"
end
end
This requires threading as you have to be listening for the response.
Here's what I'm attempting to do: Let's assume that you are in mail and create a New blank mail message, then enter some data into it, such as body copy, etc. (in my case, the message was created through scripting bridge using the "Mail Contents of this Page" from safari... the main purpose of this process for my application.)
From my application, I want to select that message and assign it to:
MailOutgoingMessage *myMessage;
so that I can programmatically add recipients. I've tried several ways of doing this which seemed logical, but so far I haven't found the right combination, and the header file doesn't seem to be very clear to me (I'm new to scripting bridge.)
My initial thought was to try this:
mailMessage = [[mail outgoingMessages] lastObject];
Which should grab the last outgoing message created. It seems to work in that I am able to add recipients to mailMessage (though there have been a few times that I received unexpected results when multiple outgoing messages exist, such as adding the recipients to the wrong message) but attempting to log the subject line of the message:
NSLog(#"Subject = %#",[mailMessage subject]);
always returns NULL even though there is a subject clearly viewable in the subject field of the message. NULL is returned for any other parameter as well.
I'm gathering it must be a problem with my assignment to mailMessage above, because the only time I receive a NULL for message properties (or receive unexpected results) is if I try to point mailMessage to an existing outgoing message. If I create the mail message with scripting bridge, then I can retrieve all of the properties correctly.
Does anyone understand the hierarchy of the Mail scripting enough to tell me why I am getting NULLs for the parameters using the above assignment for mailMessage? What would the simplest way be go grab my message so that I can add recipients and later call the:
[myMessage send];
method? Any insight would be helpful. I've spent a week going through the mail.h header file and am quite literally at a loss as to what else to try at this point.
There's no way to (send, get or set the properties of the outgoing message) that the user or Safari has created.
It's a bug (it stopped working since Mac OS X 10.4), or some privacy/security considerations.
I'm new to XMPP and the xmpp4r library, so please forgive my noob question if this is obviously documented somewhere.
What's the most straightforward way, in a synchronous manner, to find out if a given JID is online? (so that I can call something like is_online?(jid) in an if statement)
My details:
I'm writing a Sinatra app that will attempt to send a message to a user when a particular url gets requested on the web server, but it should only try to send the message to the user if that user is currently online. Figuring out if a given JID is online is my problem.
Now, I know that if I connect and wait a few seconds for all the initial presence probe responses to come back to the Roster helper, then I can inspect any of those presences from my Roster and call #online? on them to get the correct value. But, I don't know when all of the presence updates have been sent, so there's a race condition there and sometimes calling #online? on a presence from my roster will return false if I just haven't received that presence probe response yet.
So, my current thinking is that the most straightforward way to find out if someone is online is to construct a new Presence message of type :probe and send that out to the JID that I'm interested in. Here's how I'm doing it right now:
#jabber is the result of Client::new
#email is the jid I'm interested in polling
def is_online?(jabber, email)
online = false
p = Presence.new
p.set_to(email)
p.set_from(jabber.jid)
p.set_type(:probe)
pres = jabber.send(p) do |returned_presence|
online = returned_presence.nil?
end
return online
end
Now, this works in cases where the user is actually online, but when the user is offline, it looks like the presence probe message that comes back is being caught by some other presence_callback handler that doesn't know what to do with it, and my is_online? function never finishes returning a value.
Can anyone help me by providing a simple example is_online? function that I can call, or point me in the right direction for how I can detect when the roster is done getting all the initial presence updates before I try checking a presence for #online?
As it turns out, there's not a synchronous way to ask for a JID presence. You've just got to ask for what you want, then wait for your response handler to fire when the response arrives.