Get Started with the Ruby on Rails Framework

When you sign up with Plivo, we give you a free trial account and free credits to experiment with and learn about our services. You can add a number to your account to start testing the full range of our voice and SMS service features. Follow these steps to get a free trial account:

Sign up with your work email address.
Check your inbox for an activation email message from Plivo. Click on the link in the message to activate your account.
Enter your mobile number to complete the phone verification step.

If you have any issues creating a Plivo account, please contact our support team for assistance. To get started, try sending an SMS message either by using our API and XML documents, or via , our visual design tool, which allows you to create message flows using an intuitive canvas and deploy them with few clicks.

Using API

Install Ruby, Rails, and the Plivo Ruby SDK

You must set up and install Ruby, Rails, and Plivo’s Ruby SDK before you send your first SMS message.

Install Ruby

Download and install Ruby from its official site.

Install Rails

$ gem install rails

Create a Rails project

Create a Rails project to autogenerate code in the Ruby on Rails folder structure.

$ rails new plivotest

This command creates a plivotest directory with the necessary folders and files for development.

Install the Plivo gem

Edit the Gemfile and add this line.

$ gem 'plivo', '~> 4.25.1'

Then install the Plivo Ruby gem into the bundle.

$ bundle install

Send your first outbound SMS/MMS message

You must have a Plivo phone number to send messages to the US or Canada; you can rent a Plivo number from Phone Numbers > Buy Numbers on the Plivo console or via the Numbers API.

Create a Rails controller

Run this command in the project directory.

$ rails generate controller Plivo sms

This command generates a controller named plivo_controller in the app/controllers/ directory and a respective view in the app/views/plivo directory. We can delete the view as we don’t need it.

$ rm app/views/plivo/sms.html.erb

Edit app/controllers/plivo_controller.rb and paste into it this code.

include Plivo
include Plivo::Exceptions

class PlivoController < ApplicationController
	def outbound
		api = RestClient.new("<auth_id>","<auth_token>")
		response = api.messages.create(
			src:'<sender_id>',
			dst:'<destination_number>',
			text:'Hello, from Rails!'
		)
		puts response
		render json: response.to_s
	end
end

include Plivo
include Plivo::Exceptions

class PlivoController < ApplicationController
	def outbound
		api = RestClient.new("<auth_id>","<auth_token>")
		response = api.messages.create(
			src:'<sender_id>',
			dst:'<destination_number>',
			text:'Hello, MMS from Rails!',
			media_urls:['https://media.giphy.com/media/26gscSULUcfKU7dHq/source.gif'],
			type: "mms",
			media_ids:['801c2056-33ab-499c-80ef-58b574a462a2']
		)
		puts response
		render json: response.to_s
	end
end

Replace the auth placeholders with your authentication credentials from the Plivo console. Replace the phone number placeholders with actual phone numbers in E.164 format (for example, +12025551234). In countries other than the US and Canada you can use a sender ID for the message source.

Note: We recommend that you store your credentials in the auth_id and auth_token environment variables to avoid the possibility of accidentally committing them to source control. If you do this, you can initialize the client with no arguments and Plivo will automatically fetch the values from the environment variables. You can use ENV to store environment variables and fetch them when initializing the client.

Add a route

Edit config/routes.rb and change the line

get 'plivo/sms'

get 'plivo/outbound'

Test

Run your code.

$ rails server

Receive your first inbound SMS/MMS message

To receive incoming messages, you must have a Plivo phone number that supports SMS; you can rent numbers from the Numbers page of the Plivo console or by using the Numbers API.

Edit the Rails controller

Edit the app/controllers/plivo_controller.rb file generated earlier and add paste this code into the PlivoController class after the outbound function.

def inbound
    from_number = params[:From]
      to_number = params[:To]
      text = params[:Text]
      puts "Message received - From: #{from_number}, To: #{to_number}, Text: #{text}"
end

def inbound
    from_number = params[:From]
      to_number = params[:To]
      text = params[:Text]
      media_url = params[:Media0]
      puts "Message received - From: #{from_number}, To: #{to_number}, Text: #{text}, Media: #{media_url}"
end

Add a route

Edit config/routes.rb and add this line after the outbound route we added earlier.

get 'plivo/inbound'

Run your code.

$ rails server

You should see your basic server application in action at /plivo/inbound/.

Expose your local server to the internet

To receive incoming messages, your local server must connect with Plivo API services. For that, we recommend using ngrok, which exposes local servers running behind NATs and firewalls to the public internet over secure tunnels. Using ngrok, you can set webhooks that can talk to the Plivo server.

Note: Before starting the service, add ngrok in the config.hosts list in the config/environments/development.rb file in your project. You will see Blocked host errors if you fail to do this.

# Whitelist ngrok domain
config.hosts << /[a-z0-9]+\.ngrok\.io/

Run ngrok on the command line, specifying the port that hosts the application on which you want to receive messages (3000 in this case):

$ ./ngrok http 3000

This starts the ngrok server on your local server. Ngrok will display a forwarding link that you can use as a webhook to access your local server over the public network.

Now people can send messages to your Plivo number.

Create a Plivo application to receive messages

Associate the controller you created with Plivo by creating a Plivo application. Visiting Messaging > Applications and click Add New Application. You can also use Plivo’s Application API.Give your application a name — we called ours Receive SMS. Enter the server URL you want to use (for example https://<yourdomain>.com/receive_sms/) in the Message URL field and set the method to POST. Click Create Application to save your application.

Assign a Plivo number to your application

Navigate to the Numbers page and select the phone number you want to use for this application.From the Application Type drop-down, select XML Application.From the Plivo Application drop-down, select Receive SMS (the name we gave the application).Click Update Number to save.

Test

Send a text message to the Plivo number you specified using any phone.

Reply to an incoming SMS/MMS message

To receive incoming messages, you must have a Plivo phone number that supports SMS; you can rent numbers from the Numbers page of the Plivo console or by using the Numbers API.

Edit the Rails controller

Edit app/controllers/plivo_controller.rb file and paste this code into the PlivoController class after the inbound function we added earlier.

def forward
	from_number = params[:From]
	to_number = params[:To]
	text = params[:Text]
	# send the details to generate an XML
	response = Response.new
	params = {
		src: to_number,
		dst: from_number,
	}
	message_body = "This is an automatic response"
	response.addMessage(message_body, params)
	xml = PlivoXML.new(response)
	puts xml.to_xml
	render xml: xml.to_xml
end

Add a route

Edit config/routes.rb and add this line after the inbound route we added earlier.

get 'plivo/forward'

If you haven’t done so already, expose your local server to the internet.

Create a Plivo application to reply to messages

Associate the controller you created with Plivo by creating a Plivo application. Visiting Messaging > Applications and click Add New Application. You can also use Plivo’s Application API.Give your application a name — we called ours Reply Incoming SMS. Enter the server URL you want to use (for example http://<yourdomain>.com/replysms/) in the Message URL field and set the method to POST. Click Create Application to save your application.

Assign a Plivo number to your application

Navigate to the Numbers page and select the phone number you want to use for this application.From the Application Type drop-down, select XML Application.From the Plivo Application drop-down, select Reply Incoming SMS (the name we gave the application).Click Update Number to save.

Test

Send a text message to the Plivo number you specified using any phone. You should receive a reply.

More use cases

We illustrate more than a dozen use cases with code for both API/XML and PHLO on our documentation pages.

Getting Started

Concepts

API Reference

XML Reference

Tutorials

Migration Guides

Troubleshooting

Get Started with the Ruby on Rails Framework

Install Ruby, Rails, and the Plivo Ruby SDK

Install Ruby

Install Rails

Create a Rails project

Install the Plivo gem

Send your first outbound SMS/MMS message

Create a Rails controller

Add a route

Test

Receive your first inbound SMS/MMS message

Edit the Rails controller

Add a route

Expose your local server to the internet

Create a Plivo application to receive messages

Assign a Plivo number to your application

Test

Reply to an incoming SMS/MMS message

Edit the Rails controller

Add a route

Create a Plivo application to reply to messages

Assign a Plivo number to your application

Test

More use cases

Getting Started

Concepts

API Reference

XML Reference

Tutorials

Migration Guides

Troubleshooting

Documentation Index

​Sign up for a Plivo account

​Sign up with your work email address

​Install Ruby, Rails, and the Plivo Ruby SDK

​Install Ruby

​Install Rails

​Create a Rails project

​Install the Plivo gem

​Send your first outbound SMS/MMS message

​Create a Rails controller

​Add a route

​Test

​Receive your first inbound SMS/MMS message

​Edit the Rails controller

​Add a route

​Expose your local server to the internet

​Create a Plivo application to receive messages

​Assign a Plivo number to your application

​Test

​Reply to an incoming SMS/MMS message

​Edit the Rails controller

​Add a route

​Create a Plivo application to reply to messages

​Assign a Plivo number to your application

​Test

​More use cases

Sign up for a Plivo account

Sign up with your work email address

Install Ruby, Rails, and the Plivo Ruby SDK

Install Ruby

Install Rails

Create a Rails project

Install the Plivo gem

Send your first outbound SMS/MMS message

Create a Rails controller

Add a route

Test

Receive your first inbound SMS/MMS message

Edit the Rails controller

Add a route

Expose your local server to the internet

Create a Plivo application to receive messages

Assign a Plivo number to your application

Test

Reply to an incoming SMS/MMS message

Edit the Rails controller

Add a route

Create a Plivo application to reply to messages

Assign a Plivo number to your application

Test

More use cases