From: Matt Pelletier Date: 2007-01-08T03:49:16+09:00 Subject: Re: Sending SMS Messages With Ruby ------=_Part_48264_24283812.1168195753666 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline On 1/7/07, James Edward Gray II wrote: > > 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. Your two basic entry points into the mobile networks are: 1. Email SMS gateways (each carrier hosts their own, Verizon uses vtext.com). You send an email to PHONENUMBER@vtext.com, an SMS gets sent to the end user. These are free for now, but you get no guaranteed delivery, or notice of receipt, and they're a bit unreliable at times. Most phones will let you send an SMS to an email address (the phone's software and the carrier must support it), so you can do 2 way communication if you need it. 2. You can sign up for an SMS aggregator service. SMS aggregators are the formal entities that handle intra-carrier SMS traffic, so they frequently offer entry points for third party services. You would get a shortcode (or share one) and could send and receive with it. Clickatell is one noteworthy SMS service provider, but there are more and more out there these days: http://www.clickatell.com/brochure/products/developer_solutions.php Wikipedia's SMS Gateway entry is also helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateways If you want to go the Email to SMS route, there are lists online to show you which carriers use which email domain / syntax, so you could brew your own lib. This obviously means you'd need to know which carrier a person uses so you know where to send the email, so you'd have to ask the end user. I suspect there are services out there where they handle that bit for you and just require the number. Since you can transfer phone numbers between carriers now it's not as easy to predict which carrier a number is from. Good luck, Matt James Edward Gray II > > -- ------------------ Matt Pelletier http://www.eastmedia.com -- EastMedia http://www.informit.com/title/0321483502 -- The Mongrel Book http://identity.eastmedia.com -- OpenID, Identity 2.0 ------=_Part_48264_24283812.1168195753666--