SMS Text Library

[Dan East]

A couple months ago I did a quick search for PHP libraries that allow sending of SMS messages.  I came across a library, costing around $30-$50, which seemed to allow free messaging (you didn't have to sign up to an account or pay per-message).  Now I cannot find this library.  At the time I tested the library via a test routine on their site, and it worked fine texting to my phone.  One thing that was slightly different about this library.  You had to specify the cellular carrier for the phone number you were sending to.  If not, it would use some 3rd party service to find the carrier, which would append something to the message (I think just the url for their website).

 

Does this sound familiar to anyone?  I can't find the stupid url for this library after much additional searching, and I'm beginning to think I dreamed the whole thing up. 

[Dan East]

BTW, I believe this PHP library works by simply emailing the SMS to the appropriate email gateway for the various carriers.  That is why you have to specify the carrier up-front.  I would assume the library has a known working set of addresses for all the various carriers.

[.josh]

I'm sure you have a reason for wanting to find this thing, but why not just google for a list of sms email addresses and make your own?

[Dan East]

That's actually what I'm doing, supporting our local carriers first.  It's the "known working set of addresses for all the various carriers" part that's worth $30.  It is impossible for me to actually test my own routine with every carrier in the US, let alone the world, whereas I would assume this library has been used extensively enough to cover that.  Plus the whole reinventing the wheel thing.  Also, the library has support for working with phone numbers whose carrier is not known. I have no idea what service they are using to determine that information.

[.josh]

Tell you what man... couple months ago I was messin' around with this sort of thing, and my research yielded the conclusion that "unknown carriers" are people with pay as you go type phones, and it's "unknown" because it pretty much depends on the area the phone was bought in and is being used, as to which known carrier the phone is going through. 

 

As far as I could tell, the way programs like that get around it, is they just spam every known carrier with the same sms message, and hey, it'll get through to the one it actually is, and just give a fail on the other ones.  Message goes through, ignore the fails, unless you get 100% fail. 

 

I don't really feel it's a matter of re-inventing the wheel.  If you wanna adopt that philosophy, you may as well stop coding altogether.  It's a matter of saving yourself money on something that's pretty easy to code.  All you have to do is make a simple form to input a to, from, subject, message, carrier (dropdown).  The list of "known" sms addresses is pretty easy to find; just google 'sms email addresses.'  When info is posted, simply mail() with that info.  If user chooses unknown, simply loop through and mail() to all. 

 

I'm not really sure about the whole sending sms messages to other country's carriers.  Never really looked into that because it wasn't really relevant to my curiosities.  I guess it really depends on what your overall goals and needs are.  There are a lot of places you can have your script post the info to (using curl or w/e) and they will send it off for you, even to other countries. 

 

[corbin]

I would gladly reinvent a small wheel for $30.  Then again, this isn't that small unless you take the Crayon approach.