Action Texter – Deliver text messages just like Action Mailer¶ ↑

Action Texter is a framework inspired from Action Mailer v5.0.0 for designing text message service layers. These layers are used to consolidate code for sending out forgotten passwords, welcome wishes on signup, invoices for billing, and any other use case that requires a written notification to either a person or another system by text messages or other messaging system.

Action Texter is in essence a wrapper around Abstract Controller and the delivery adapters. It provides a way to make text messages using templates in the same way that Action Controller renders views using templates, just like what Action Mailer does.

Sending text messages¶ ↑

The framework works by initializing any instance variables you want to be available in the message template, followed by a call to text to deliver the message.

This can be as simple as:

class Notifier < ActionTexter::Base
  def welcome(recipient)
    @recipient = recipient
    text to: recipient
  end
end

The body of the message is created by using an Action View template (regular ERB) that has the instance variables that are declared in the texter action.

So the corresponding body template for the method above could look like this:

Hello there,

Your phone number: <%= @recipient %> is registered.

Thank you for signing up!

If the recipient was given as “+886987654321”, the text message generated would look like this:

Hello there,

Your phone number: +886987654321 is registered.

Thank you for signing up!

In order to send text messages, you simply call the method and then call deliver_now on the return value. (Just like Action Mailer 🎉)

Calling the method returns a Message object:

message = Notifier.welcome("+886987654321")   # => Returns a wrapper with a ActionTexter::Message object
message.deliver_now                           # => delivers the text message

Or you can just chain the methods together like:

Notifier.welcome("+886987654321").deliver_now # Creates the text message and sends it immediately

Setting defaults¶ ↑

It is possible to set default values that will be used in every method in your Action Texter class. To implement this functionality, you just call the public class method default which you get for free from ActionTexter::Base. This method accepts a Hash as the parameter. Like Action Mailer, it is also possible to pass in a Proc that will get evaluated when it is needed.

Note that every value you set with this method will get overwritten if you use the same key in your texter method.

Example:

class Authenticationtexter < ActionTexter::Base
  default charset: "UTF-8", to: Proc.new { recipients.sample }
  .....
end

Configuration¶ ↑

The Base class has the full list of configuration options. Here’s an example:

ActionTexter::Base.file_settings = {
  location: "/tmp/texter" # => The path for saving messages with file adapter
}

This can also be configured in ‘Rails.application.configure` block, like this:

Rails.application.configure do
  config.action_texter.delivery_method = :file # => Pick a adapter for sending message
  config.action_texter.file_settings = {
    location: "/tmp/texter"
  }
end

Download and installation¶ ↑

The latest version of Action Texter can be installed with RubyGems:

$ gem install actiontexter

Source code can be downloaded on GitHub

• github.com/sharelike/action_texter

License¶ ↑

Action Texter is released under the MIT license:

• www.opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Support¶ ↑

Bug reports can be here:

• github.com/sharelike/action_texter/issues