Courier Bot

Courier Bot is a simple SMS reporting proof of concept. This application is the result of observations made by reading about projects used in humanitarian aid and disaster relief over the past years (projects such as FrontlineSMS, Ushahidi, Needslist...).

This project was built using Rails 5. It’s using the TwilioSMS API and websockets through Rails 5 ActionCable. It also uses Devise for authentication, Bootstrap 4, and Redis.

Demo: https://courier-bot.etiennebaque.com (login: demo@example.com - password: sms_is_alive)

Development

git clone git@github.com:etiennebaque/courierbot.git
cd courierbot && bundle install
rails db:setup
rails s # App can be reached at http://localhost:3000

Third-party services

2 more things before you get started

• (development only) Install Ngrok and run ./ngrok http 3000 to make your Rails app accessible publicly, via a secure tunnel.
• You need to sign up to Twilio. -- Once you got access to the Twilio console, get a new phone number for incoming messages. -- If you’re using Twilio in dev, enter your ngrok url in the Messaging section of your Twilio phone number page. -- You will then have to set up these three environment variables locally, with values from your Twilio console, so that you can send text messages to your app:

  export TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID=""
  export TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN=""
  export TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER=""