In this guide, we show you how to:

1. Create an account and get your free test number (US only).
2. Send your first SMS.

Sign up for a Sinch account

Before you can send your first SMS, you need a Sinch
account. If you are in the United States, you also need a free test phone number.

Send SMS

If you haven't already, create a new node app with npm, accept the defaults, and add the request package.

npm init
npm install request

Create index.js and paste the below into the file:

var request = require("request");
var messageData = {
  from: "{your free test number}",
  to: ["{To number}"],
  body: "This is a test message from your Sinch account",
};
var options = {
  method: "POST",
  url: "https://us.sms.api.sinch.com/xms/v1/{service_plan_id}/batches",
  headers: {
    accept: "application/json",
    "content-type": "application/json",
    Authorization: "Bearer {your token}",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify(messageData),
};

request(options, function (error, response, body) {
  console.log(response.body);
  if (error) throw new Error(error);
  console.log(body);
});

Replace the token values

Before you can execute the code that sends an SMS message, you need to replace the following values with your values:

{service_plan_id}
{your token}
{your free test number}
{To number}

To find the service plan and token, go to https://dashboard.sinch.com/sms/api/rest, log in and click “Show” to reveal your API token.

To find the From-number, click the service plan id link and scroll to the bottom of the page and then change the {To number} to your phone number.

Click here to read more about the batches endpoint.

Receive SMS

We use webhooks to notify your application when someone sends a text to your Sinch number. To handle these, you will learn how to create a webserver and make it reachable on the Internet.

Create a HTTP server SMS with Node.js

Paste the below at the bottom of your index.js:

const http = require("http");
const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
  let data = [];
  req.on("data", (chunk) => {
    data.push(chunk);
  });
  req.on("end", () => {
    console.log(JSON.parse(data));
  });
  res.end();
});
server.listen(3000);

Start the server

node index.js

Open up a tunnel to your server

1. Configure your callbacks at https://dashboard.sinch.com/sms/api/rest. Click your service and fill in the Callback URL field with the ngrok.io domain from above.
2. Open up a tunnel to your local server. For that, you can use ngrok tunnel. Open a terminal/command prompt and type: ngrok http 3000
3. Copy the https address that ends with .ngrok.io.
4. Send a reply to sms.

Read more about all the different endpoints in the API reference guide

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