Receiving text messages

Peter B

I send messages automatically through an online website to bulk numbers. Not spam by the way, all these people have signed up. They then send a response and from that I can enter them in a competition. I want to save all my text messages I receive in my database after parsing through them for information. I want all of this to be done from my web server.

Does anyone know of any companies who provide this service? Is it expensive or free?

I only need a company who will receive the text messages and somehow allow me to parse the text messages with my php on my server.

Thanks

Sparks

Try Clickatell, their API seems reasonably complete and they're not hugely expensive.

Peter B

Sparks wrote: »

Try Clickatell, their API seems reasonably complete and they're not hugely expensive.

Thanks very much for that. I actually use Clickatell to send my messages. Do you know do they offer a receive message service?

hobochris

The other alternative is get a gsm modem card. Saves you paying a third party.

But of course it depends on what type of service your providing.

edit: Look at Clickatell they may be more cost effective unless a majority of your messages are inbound.

Schrodingercat

I think Puca (puca.ie) do this.

Not sure if any of the mobile providers (vodafone/02 )allow you to read text messages via their websites. I'm with 3 and they don't. If they did you could do some screen scraping. Cheapest/easist way is probably find an old nokia phone and plug it in to your machine, and use the api for reading messages from the phone.

ViperMAN

Schrodingercat wrote: »

I think Puca (puca.ie) do this.

Not sure if any of the mobile providers (vodafone/02 )allow you to read text messages via their websites. I'm with 3 and they don't. If they did you could do some screen scraping. Cheapest/easist way is probably find an old nokia phone and plug it in to your machine, and use the api for reading messages from the phone.

I agree,

I did a final year project using an old nokia 6230i. The API I used was SMSLib...very good and alot of documentation: with two great examples, ReadMessage and SendMessage.

eagleeyejoe

Peter B wrote: »

Thanks very much for that. I actually use Clickatell to send my messages. Do you know do they offer a receive message service?

Yes Clickatell provide a two way sms gateway. they have a lice chat feature on their site where you can talk to sales agents. Very helpful. Here is the live chat feature. http://www.clickatell.com/pricing/message_cost.php

Placebo

essendex, dont bother with clickatell, their 2 way pricing doesnt suit, they dont even offer an irish number...

nayton

thanks for this, do you have any suggestions as to where someone can get a gsm modem card or can you recommend a reliable one?

nayton

ViperMAN wrote: »

I agree,

I did a final year project using an old nokia 6230i. The API I used was SMSLib...very good and alot of documentation: with two great examples, ReadMessage and SendMessage.

viperman, did you find this reliable?

DId you have to keep deleting messages from the phone as it filled up?

Any other phone types that work?

ViperMAN

nayton wrote: »

viperman, did you find this reliable?

DId you have to keep deleting messages from the phone as it filled up?

Any other phone types that work?

Reliable for my use anyway, but come to think about it in a FYP it wouldn't come under as much pressure as it probaly would in your case. I was only reading a message and sending a reply one by one. The system never came under too much strain. You'll have to try it out I suppose, but I do remember reading somewhere that it was slow to send many messages at a time.

With regards to keep deleting messages, I did have to do this- but to overcome this, I am pretty sure there is a DeleteAllMessages() method or something in SMSLib that I called after I parsed the incomming message.

There are alot of handsets that work but you will have to be carefull as to which phone to use, I had a Nokia 6234 (which is new enough compared to what I used in the end, a Nokia 6230i) but this handset wasn't supported. You see, a GSM modem interacts with the computer using AT commands like 'AT+CMGR' to read message and 'AT+CMGS' to send a message (don't worry about these commands, SMSLib does all this in the background), some handsets support them, some only a subset of them. So be sure to do a google first before you buy.

At the end of the day, it is a cheap and easy option but I worry about its scalability, it all depends on how much pressure you want to put on it. But seeing as its free you might as well look into it and if it doesnt work for you, nothing lost.