Scabby Posted January 31, 2008 Share Posted January 31, 2008 I have a great idea to help a charitable organisation but I need a script to make it happen. I don't think this would be too difficult. I do some work for a Mental Health Charity in which one of their main requirements is to have their clients drop in to meetings whenever they may be in a new Town. The information the clients would need would be the number of venues, Venue, Town, Street and Time and computers/internet access would not be any good as most clients would not have that access or maybe the skills. What I would need is a php script that when an incoming SMS(to a pre-paid service I set up using their API) with the query of a town, would then collect the relevant information records and return them to the SMS senders Mobile. From the Clients point of view they would Send an SMS with say Birmingham and they would recieve back a SMS from my site with the number of venues, Venue, Town, Street and Time. If someone can point me to some sort of solution for this or an existing script I would be very very thankful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amites Posted January 31, 2008 Share Posted January 31, 2008 without knowing more about the service you've signed up for no way to tell, if they offer an API to search their information then your solution is probably going to be provided from them or custom built... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattclements Posted January 31, 2008 Share Posted January 31, 2008 Ill help you out with this.... however I will need to look into appropriate SMS reveivers.. Cheers Matt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scabby Posted February 2, 2008 Author Share Posted February 2, 2008 I pulled a website together for them, it had forums and various methods for people to use but it ultimately failed because I failed to take into account the level with which most target people could understand, so I retired to re-think and not one to give up I hatched out another fail safe plan that would. All the people have mobile phones and THE most requested information is small offerings of information such as day, time, venue. So if I could marry the two together this would be a workable solution. ie They text (town) to the website, it responds by querying the database for the town and returning the info for that town as a message to the sender, I looked into errr two I think at the time and they used an API available as .php and I could (or should) be able to integrate this into my existing php site with its own SQL database. However I'm not a php programmer, I can edit code but that's it. I'm using a popular CMS to do the site. Now I know I'm asking a bit for someone to look into this but surely this would be a universal idea (the ability to query a SQL database by Mobile Phone, yes?) and yet I look in vain! all the SMS providers will do is give you the API Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scabby Posted February 2, 2008 Author Share Posted February 2, 2008 Right, I had to go away and find this out, it's been a little time since I paid much thought to this, however its one of those ideas that just will not go away. The two gateways I looked into were, http://www.clickatell.com/ or more specifically; http://www.clickatell.com/developers/api_http.php and the second supplier I know does this is http://www.mysmsaddress.com/ or more specifically; http://www.mysmsaddress.com/index.jsp?KEY=TOOLS I'm sure there are more however I have seen a module using these, this module didn't have any ability to return SMS to sender or look up data in the MySQL database unfortunately, but at least these sites do provide the requirements and sample codes I would need to use. As my CMS (Joomla) uses PHP and MySQL database support, I think all the ingredients are there for the job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scabby Posted February 2, 2008 Author Share Posted February 2, 2008 Right, I had to go away and find this out, it's been a little time since I paid much thought to this, however its one of those ideas that just will not go away, mostly because I keep coming up with ideas where I could use it. The two gateways I looked into were, http://www.clickatell.com/ or more specifically; http://www.clickatell.com/developers/api_http.php and the second supplier I know does this is http://www.mysmsaddress.com/ or more specifically; http://www.mysmsaddress.com/index.jsp?KEY=TOOLS I'm sure there are more however I have seen a module using these, this module didn't have any ability to return SMS to sender or look up data in the MySQL database unfortunately, but at least these sites do provide the requirements and sample codes I would need to use. As my CMS (Joomla) uses PHP and MySQL database support, I think all the ingredients are there for the job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scabby Posted February 6, 2008 Author Share Posted February 6, 2008 This is something I have tried and tried to get help with and still it doesn't happen!!! I search for this and nothing, I would think folks could find numerous applications for this and yet I still cannot find anyone who could help with this, I'm confused? Why isn't this feasible?, it surely isn't that difficult for someone with the php skills to do? Request comes in, check query is valid, pull record/s, compile into one message, send to requester! I pay for outgoing message asking for donations.! This will help at least 40 thousand people in the UK alone and that is for just one voluntary organisation. HELP! Phil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laffin Posted February 6, 2008 Share Posted February 6, 2008 it is feasible, problem is 1) ppl here dunno the api 2) there are different sms methods, including direct (using an api), email gateways, even web proxies. prolly the easiest way is using email gateways. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haku Posted February 6, 2008 Share Posted February 6, 2008 Its not even that it sounds particularly hard to do, but to tell someone else how to do that is beyond the scope of a forum board. If you can't do it, you need to either hire someone who will, or start looking around for a person who is willing to do some free work for charity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scabby Posted February 20, 2008 Author Share Posted February 20, 2008 I have now written to ClickTell asking if they could help me with this poblem. Thing is I would think a 'general SQL query' script would be valuable to so many, I thought someone would take up this idea because it has sooo many uses.! perhaps I was wrong! ??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laffin Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 Now if u had a sample script, that was semi-functional, as haku stated, more ppl would be willing to help. But ya want a script from scratch, with very little information. Thus requesting someone to write it for u. Yer right, the SQL is very simple, since all u have to do is lookup a zipcode or similar info, and send info to the designation. This is where the API comes in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scabby Posted February 25, 2008 Author Share Posted February 25, 2008 My apologies for my curt reply. I have found someone now who can help. It was just that I have been trying to find someone who can help with this non-profit idea for some time!, I mean about 18 months. There just is NO script out there that does this task and I'm amazed there isn't! With the web the way it is you would think there would be a more universal sort of access between mobile and web, with a sprinkle of SQL the possibilities are endless. Rock on lads! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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