This guide shows how to send an SMS text message to any phone number. Businesses send text messages to notify customers about recent information, send alerts, and provide delivery status updates, among other use cases.
You can start sending SMS messages either by using our PHLO visual workflow builder or our APIs. Follow the instructions in one of the tabs below.
You can create and deploy a PHLO to send an SMS text message with a few clicks on the PHLO canvas and trigger it with a few lines of code.
To get started, you need a Plivo account — sign up with your work email address if you don’t have one already. If this is your first time triggering a PHLO with .NET, follow our instructions to set up a .NET development environment.
To create a PHLO, visit the PHLO page of the Plivo console. If this is your first PHLO, the PHLO page will be empty.
Click Create New PHLO.
In the Choose your use case pop-up, click Build my own. The PHLO canvas will appear with the Start node.
From the list of components on the left-hand side, drag and drop the Send Message component onto the canvas. When a component is placed on the canvas it becomes a node.
Draw a line to connect the Start node’s API Request trigger state to the Send Message node.
In the Configuration pane at the right of the canvas, configure the Send Message node with a sender ID in the From field. Enter the destination number you wish to send a message to in the To field. Put your message in the Text field.
Once you’ve configured the node, click Validate to save the configuration.
Your PHLO is now ready to test.
You integrate a PHLO into your application workflow by making an API request to trigger the PHLO with the required payload — the set of parameters you pass to the PHLO. You can define a static payload by specifying values when you create the PHLO, or define a dynamic payload by passing values through parameters when you trigger the PHLO from your application.
In either case, you need your Auth ID and Auth Token, which you can get from the overview page of the Plivo console.
You also need the PHLO ID, which you can copy from the PHLO list page.
When you configure values when creating the PHLO, they act as a static payload.
In Visual Studio, in the CS project, open the file Program.cs
and paste into it this code.
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using System;
using Plivo;
namespace test_PHLO
{
class Program
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
var phloClient = new PhloApi("<auth_id>", "<auth_token>");
var phloID = "<phlo_id>";
var phlo = phloClient.Phlo.Get(phloID);
Console.WriteLine(phlo.Run());
}
}
}
Replace the auth placeholders with your authentication credentials from the Plivo console. Replace the phlo_id placeholder with your PHLO ID from the Plivo console.
To use dynamic values for the parameters, use Liquid templating parameters when you create the PHLO and pass the values from your code when you trigger it.
In Visual Studio, in the CS project, open the file Program.cs
and paste into it this code.
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using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using Plivo;
namespace test_PHLO
{
class Program
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
var phloClient = new PhloApi("<auth_id>", "<auth_token>");
var phloID = "<phlo_id>";
var phlo = phloClient.Phlo.Get(phloID);
var data = new Dictionary<string, object>
{
{ "From", "<sender_id>" },
{ "To", "<destination_number>" }
};
Console.WriteLine(phlo.Run(data));
}
}
}
Replace the auth placeholders with your authentication credentials from the Plivo console. Replace the phlo_id placeholder with your PHLO ID from the Plivo console. Replace the phone number placeholders with actual phone numbers in E.164 format (for example, +12025551234).
Save the file and run it.
Here’s how to use Plivo APIs to send outbound SMS text messages.
To get started, you need a Plivo account — sign up with your work email address if you don’t have one already. If this is your first time using Plivo APIs, follow our instructions to set up a .NET development environment.
In Visual Studio, in the CS project, open the file Program.cs
and paste into it this code.
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using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using Plivo;
namespace PlivoExamples
{
internal class Program
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
var api = new PlivoApi("<auth_id>","<auth_token>");
var response = api.Message.Create(
src: "<sender_id>",
dst: "<destination_number>",
text: "Hello, from .NET!"
);
Console.WriteLine(response);
}
}
}
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. You must have a Plivo phone number to send messages to the US or Canada; you can buy a Plivo number from Phone Numbers > Buy Numbers on the Plivo console or via the Numbers API.
Save the file and run it.