Prerequisites
- Sign up for a free Plivo trial account or log in to your Plivo account.
- Check out our Server SDKs page for information on how to install the SDK for the programming language you want to use.
- Buy a Plivo phone number. You must have a phone number to receive and reply to SMS text messages. You can buy a Plivo phone number in available countries by visiting Phone Numbers > Buy Numbers. Check the SMS API coverage page for supported countries.
- Use a web hosting service to host your web application. Many inexpensive cloud hosting providers cost just a few dollars a month. Follow the instructions of your hosting provider to host your web application.
Set up a web server
For this example, let’s assume your web server is located at http://example.com. The following snippet will set up a route on your web server. Now, when we send an HTTP request to http://example.com/receive_sms, this route will be triggered.
Create an application
- Create an application by either visiting Voice > XML and clicking on Add New Application, or by using Plivo’s Application API.
- Give your application a name. For this example, let’s call it Receive SMS. Enter your server URL (for example http://example.com/receive_sms) in the message URL field and set the method to POST. See our Application API reference guide to learn how to modify your application through our APIs.
- Click on Create Application to save your application.
Assign a Plivo number to your app
- Navigate to the Phone Numbers page and select the phone number you want to use for this app.
- Select Receive SMS (the name of the app) from the Plivo App drop-down list.
- Click on Update Number to save.
If you don’t have a number, go to Phone Numbers > Buy Numbers to purchase a Plivo phone number.
Test it
Send an SMS to your Plivo number using a regular mobile phone. Plivo will send a request with message attributes to your Message URL.