Send an SMS
The fastest way to send your first SMS is to try out the SMS API Explorer below. If you have your credentials, follow the instructions to use TeleSign’s SMS API for the first time. You will also be able to get a code snippet for the request in the language of your choice.
Use these instructions with the SMS API Explorer (above) to send an SMS request and get a code snippet for making the request in the language of your choice.
- Click the Auth [basic] tab and for Username add your customer ID. For Password add your API key.
- Click the Body tab and in the phone_number field, enter your phone number with the country code. Do not include special characters or spaces.
- Click Send.
- Click the Code Generation tab and use the Language and Library drop-downs to choose the language you want your code snippet in.
- After you send your request, look through the JSON response and save the value for the
reference_idparameter. You will need this to receive transaction status results, described on the Obtain Transaction Status Results page.
Congratulations! You’ve sent your first SMS using TeleSign’s SMS API and generated your first code snippet!
You can see more about available parameters for requests on the POST v1/messaging page.
The rest of this page provides details about TeleSign’s SMS API. You can choose from these options:
SMS API Information
This section provides general information about the SMS API.
- The URI is
https://rest-ww.telesign.com/v1/messaging - Authentication - You can authenticate with basic or digest authentication.
- Use UTF-8 encoded unicode characters as inputs for all TeleSign APIs.
- Content-Type is application/x-www-form-urlencoded
You can read more about parameters you can send in an SMS request on the POST v1/messaging page.
Examples
You use a POST request to send your message.
POST https://rest-ww.telesign.com/v1/messaging HTTP/1.1
Authorization: Basic 12345678-9ABC-DEF0-1234-56789ABCDEF0:vjE/ZDfPvDkuGNsuqCFFO4neYIs=
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2017 14:51:26 GMT
phone_number=15551212&message=Your message here.&account_lifecycle_event=create&originating_ip=203.0.113.45Here is an example POST response:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2017 14:51:28 GMT
Server: CERN/3.0 libwww/2.17
Content-Length: 316
Allow: GET,POST
Content-Type: application/json
{
"external_id": "External custom ID",
"reference_id": "0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF",
"status": {
"code": 290,
"updated_on": "2017-31-03T14:51:28.709526Z",
"description": "Message in progress"
},
"additional_info": {
"code_entered": null,
"message_parts_count" : 1
}
}Next Steps
This section offers some suggestions for next steps to take.
- Review available parameters for your request on the POST v1/messaging page.
- Obtain Transaction Status Results
- Add Inbound SMS - Read about how to add inbound SMS to your implementation.
- Implement with an SDK - If you want to try implementing with digest authentication instead of basic authentication, use one of TeleSign’s SDK.