How to make phone calls and send SMS with PHP

Bandwidth has a full suite of messaging API and voice API solutions to power your business needs. Whether you want to send MMS or SMS messages from toll-free numbers, local numbers, or short codes, Bandwidth’s APIs make it easy to enable in your software or platform, while Bandwidth’s relationships with the carriers give you reliable message delivery and insights. 

Introduction

In this article, you will see a quick overview of what sending your first message and creating your first call looks like when using Bandwidth’s Voice and Messaging APIs along with Bandwidth’s PHP SDK. First, you will see some code examples and then at the end of this article is an explanation of the variables you would need to insert into the code to make the SDK work with your Bandwidth account.

Additional resources:

• Bandwidth’s SDKs & Developer Tools
• Bandwidth PHP SDK GitHub

Packages and Client Initialization

The Bandwidth PHP SDK package is available through composer. So the first step is to require it.

composer require bandwidth/sdk

Then you need to initialize the configuration for the SDK client.

<?php

require "vendor/autoload.php";

$config = new BandwidthLib\Configuration(
    array(
        'messagingBasicAuthUserName' => '{username}',
        'messagingBasicAuthPassword' => '{password}',
        'voiceBasicAuthUserName' => '{username}',
        'voiceBasicAuthPassword' => '{password}',
    )
);
$client = new BandwidthLib\BandwidthClient($config);
$messagingClient = $client->getMessaging()->getClient();

How to send a text message with PHP

Sending a SMS Message with PHP from a Bandwidth number looks like this. This must be in the same file as your initiated client or the client must be imported here.

$messagingBody = new BandwidthLib\Messaging\Models\MessageRequest();
$messagingBody->applicationId = '{app_id}';
$messagingBody->to = array('{to_number}');
$messagingBody->from = '{from_number}';
$messagingBody->text = 'Hello, I am sending a message! How fun!';

$messagingClient->createMessage('{account_id}', $messagingBody);

You will need to set up a server that can receive a callback/webhooks with a JSON body that will tell you if the message was successfully delivered or not. Some simple PHP server code that can process Bandwidth messaging callbacks could look like this.

<?php

if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST')
    $data = json_decode(file_get_contents('php://input'), true);
    if ($data[0]['type'] == 'message-delivered')
        //successful delivery action
        http_response_code(200);
    if ($data[0]['type'] == 'message-failed')
        $failure_reason = $data[0]['description'];
        //failed delivery action
        http_response_code(200);
    http_response_code(200);

How to make phone calls with PHP

Making a phone call with PHP from a Bandwidth number looks like this. This must be in the same file as your initiated client or the client must be imported here.

$voiceBody = new BandwidthLib\Voice\Models\CreateCallRequest();
$voiceBody->from = '{from_number}';
$voiceBody->to = '{to_number}';
$voiceBody->answerUrl = '{url}';
$voiceBody->applicationId = '{app_id}';

$voiceClient = $client->getVoice()->getClient();
$voiceClient->createCall('{account_id}', $voiceBody)

When the call is answered by whoever you sent the call to, Bandwidth will send a callback/webhook with a JSON body to the URL you specified when you created the call. You can send BXML verbs back to Bandwidth in response to the callback/webhook in order to create new actions on the call. Some simple server code that would make the call play some text-to-speech audio and then hang up could look like this:

<?php

require "vendor/autoload.php";

if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST')
    $data = json_decode(file_get_contents('php://input'), true);
    if ($data['eventType'] == 'answer')
        $speakSentence = new BandwidthLibVoiceBxmlSpeakSentence('I am saying something and now will hang up.');
        $speakSentence->voice('julie');

        $hangup = new BandwidthLibVoiceBxmlHangup();

        $response = new BandwidthLibVoiceBxmlResponse();
        $response->addVerb($speakSentence);
        $response->addVerb($hangup);

        echo $response->toBxml();
    http_response_code(200);

And that’s it! That’s how simple it is to create your first message and call with a Bandwidth phone number, Bandwidth’s API, and Bandwidth’s PHP SDK.

Variable Reference

Here is an explanation of the variables used in the above code that will be unique to your account and use case.