Notify: SMS Notifications Quickstart

The first thing you need in order to send an SMS notification is a Twilio-powered phone number. You can grab one to use in the console here by going to the Numbers tab to add a phone number. Make sure that it has SMS enabled!

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Now for Notify to use this Phone number, we need to add it to Messaging Service and associate it with Notify Service Instance.

Go to console Programmable SMS -> Messaging Service

Create a new Messaging Service.

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Messaging Services allow you to organize your messages and enable specific features for groups of messages. It has a lot of cool features and you can read about them here, but now we just need it to send SMS from your new Twilio Phone Number.

To do that, add your new Twilio Phone Number to the Messaging Service

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Now that we have a Phone Number and a Messaging Service, we must create a Notify Service Instance that we'll use the new Twilio Phone Number to send SMS Notifications.

In the console, create a Notify Service. Make note of the SID! You will use this later when you start writing code further down.

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Now choose your new Messaging Service for this Notify Service Instance

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Next, we will gather account information and start writing a bit of code.

Now we're ready to write some code!

This step is optional. If you do not want to store the phone numbers of your users in Notify to manage all contact information in one place, you can just skip ahead to Send an SMS Notification.

A Binding is a combination of a user and a device that can receive a notification. You can find out more about bindings and how to create, list, retrieve or delete them, under REST API - > Bindings menu.

In this example, we will create a binding with type 'sms'.

You will need:

• Your account information (gathered above)
• User Identity - this is a unique identifier of the user. In this example it's 00000001, but it's up to you, how you identify your users. The only requirement - it has to be unique and not Personally Identifiable Information.
• User's phone number (parameter 'Address') - for testing purposes, let's create a binding with your mobile phone number so you can actually receive it. In the example, it's +1651000000000

Here, we use the REST API to create a Binding

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// Download the Node helper library from www.twilio.com/docs/libraries/node#installation
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// These identifiers are your accountSid and authToken from
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// https://www.twilio.com/console
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// To set up environmental variables, see http://twil.io/secure
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const accountSid = process.env.TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID;
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const authToken = process.env.TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN;
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const client = require('twilio')(accountSid, authToken);
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const bindingOpts = {
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  identity: '00000001', // We recommend using a GUID or other anonymized identifier for Identity.
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  bindingType: 'sms',
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  address: '+1651000000000',
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};
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client.notify
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  .services('ISXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX')
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  .bindings.create(bindingOpts)
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  .then(binding => console.log(binding.sid))
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  .catch(error => console.log(error))
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  .done();

Now that we have a binding, all we need to do is send an SMS notification!

In this step, we will send an SMS. If you created a Binding in the previous step we are going to use that if not you can just provide the phone number(s) you want to message directly in the request.

You will need:

• Your account information (gathered above)
• User's Identity or phone number, to whom you want to send the SMS (Note, if you are using Identity then a binding between the Identity and the phone number has to be created first. See an example at Create a Binding for SMS.)
• Body - text of the message to be sent.

Here, we use the REST API to send an SMS Notification using Identity

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// Download the Node helper library from www.twilio.com/docs/libraries/node#installation
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// These identifiers are your accountSid and authToken from
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// https://www.twilio.com/console
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// To set up environmental variables, see http://twil.io/secure
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const accountSid = process.env.TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID;
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const authToken = process.env.TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN;
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const client = require('twilio')(accountSid, authToken);
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const notificationOpts = {
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  identity: '00000001', // We recommend using a GUID or other anonymized identifier for Identity.
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  body: 'Knok-Knok! This is your first Notify SMS',
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};
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client.notify
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  .services('ISXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX')
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  .notifications.create(notificationOpts)
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  .then(notification => console.log(notification.sid))
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  .catch(error => console.log(error));

Alternatively, you can just provide the phone number directly. If you want to send an SMS to multiple phone numbers, just add more ToBinding parameters.

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// Download the Node helper library from www.twilio.com/docs/libraries/node#installation
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// These identifiers are your accountSid and authToken from
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// https://www.twilio.com/console
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// To set up environmental variables, see http://twil.io/secure
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const accountSid = process.env.TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID;
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const authToken = process.env.TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN;
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const client = require('twilio')(accountSid, authToken);
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const notificationOpts = {
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  toBinding: JSON.stringify({
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    binding_type: 'sms',
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    address: '+1651000000000',
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  }),
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  body: 'Knock-Knock! This is your first Notify SMS',
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};
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client.notify
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  .services('ISXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX')
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  .notifications.create(notificationOpts)
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  .then(notification => console.log(notification.sid))
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  .catch(error => console.log(error));

There's much more you can do with Notify. Try our other Quickstarts to send:

• iOS Push Notification
• Android Push Notifications

Or learn how to send Notifications to a group of users.