Sending SMS with Laravel and Twilio

In this tutorial, we'll leverage the robust Laravel framework to easily integrate Twilio for sending SMS within a web application.

Create a laravel project

Begin by creating a new Laravel project, changing directories to the project, and opening it with Visual Studio Code.

composer create-project laravel/laravel example-app

cd ./example-app

code .
bash

Install twilio sms package

Download the Twilio package to enable SMS functionality in your Laravel web application

composer require twilio/sdk
bash

Retrieve Twilio Authentication Keys

Register on Twilio, navigate to your console, and copy both the Account SID and Auth Token. Place these credentials in your .env file.

TWILIO_SID=YOUR_SID_HERE

TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN=YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN_HERE

Creating a controller

Generate a controller to connect an endpoint to your Laravel project. Use the following command, naming the controller SmsController.

php artisan make:controller SmsController
bash

Implement SMS Functionality See the full code below for sending an SMS with Twilio in the SmsController

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Twilio\Rest\Client;

class SmsController extends Controller
{
   public function index(Request $request) {
      $account_sid = getenv("TWILIO_SID");
      $auth_token = getenv("TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN");
      $client = new Client($account_sid, $auth_token);

      $message_id = $client->messages->create(
         $request->input("phonenumber"),
         [
            "from" => $request->input("from"),
            "body" => $request->input("body")
         ]
      );
      return response([
         "message" => "You have send an sms",
         "message_id" => $message_id
      ]);
   }
}

### Twilio client initialization
```php
$account_sid = getenv("TWILIO_SID");
$auth_token = getenv("TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN");
$client = new Client($account_sid, $auth_token);
php

Retrieve Twilio Account SID and Auth Token from environment variables and create a new instance of the Client class from the Twilio SDK.

Twilio message send

$message_id = $client->messages->create(
   $request->input("phonenumber"),
   [
      "from" => $request->input("from"),
      "body" => $request->input("body")
   ]
);
php

Attempt to send an SMS message using the Twilio API, extracting sender and receiver phone numbers along with the message body from the HTTP request.

Return a response

return response([
   "message" => "You have send an sms",
   "message_id" => $message_id
]);
php