Tag Archives: Tropo

New version 0.1.3 of Tropo-webapi-python: Build Tropo voice/SMS/IM/Twitter apps using python

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My former colleague Justin Dupree just posted a new version of the Tropo-webapi-python package to Pypi at:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/tropo-webapi-python/

To install the package, assuming you have pip installed, you should be able to just type:

pip install tropo-webapi-python

and then you can get started building Tropo applications that use voice, SMS, IM or Twitter as channels to communicate with people. The documentation for the Tropo WebAPI provides a full explanation of the API and also sample applications. Samples are also provided in the distribution.

The “tropo-webapi-python” package lives on Github at:

https://github.com/tropo/tropo-webapi-python

and those of you wanting to live on the edge can simply clone the repository from Github and use it there.

I’ll also mention that at this point I’ve completely stepped away from the maintenance of this ‘tropo-webapi-python’ package (as I’m no longer with Voxeo) and Justin and the Voxeo Labs team are now maintaining the package.

Have fun with it! I definitely enjoy creating Tropo apps using python!

Use Node.js to Build Your Own SMS or IM Interface to Twitter

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NodejslogoWould you like to create your own SMS interface to Twitter? To be able to post your own tweets via SMS? Or would you like to have an IM interface to Twitter using Jabber, GoogleTalk, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc?

And would you like to do all this using Node.js?

Sure, Twitter already offers its own SMS interface… but hey, why not build your own to play with Node.js?

That’s exactly what my colleague Justin Dupree did and then wrote up in this great blog post:

Building a Twitter SMS/IM Service with Tropo & Node.js

I love it! I mean… combine 3 of my favorite passions: Twitter, Tropo and Node.js… mix them together, shake them a bit and out pops a very cool mashup that lets you have your own interface to Twitter using SMS or IM.

Kudos to Justin for the great way he walked through the code in the post… and also made the full Tropo-Node-Twitter code available on Github. I’m looking forward to playing with it more and seeing what else I can do with it…

P.S. I’m naturally found on Twitter at twitter.com/danyork.

Follow The Tropo Blog To Learn About Developing For Voice, SMS, IM, Twitter…

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TropologoWant to learn about how to build apps that interact with people via voice, text messaging / SMS, instant messaging and Twitter? Using languages like Ruby, python, PHP, Groovy and Node.js?

If so, check out the Tropo blog for some cool examples, tutorials and videos. As I was catching up on my Twitter feed this morning, I noticed a great post there about responding differently to different types of users and a short video about using SMS to find the time and date of tweetchats. Cool stuff!

P.S. And yes, in full disclosure Tropo.com is a cloud communications service of my employer, Voxeo, and I do myself sometimes write on the Tropo blog, particularly about python or Node.js. However, if I didn’t think what they are writing about there is in fact interesting, I wouldn’t mention it here. 🙂

Setting Up a PyPI Account – And Uploading the Tropo WebAPI Library

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Python logoIt’s funny… I’ve been writing small python programs for 10 or 15 years now (makefaq being perhaps the one most widely used), but in all that time, I had never set myself up with a PyPI account. PyPI, for those not in the python world, is the “Python Package Index” which lists all the uploaded packages and makes them easy to install onto systems. It’s sort of the python version of Perl’s CPAN, PHP’s PEAR or Ruby’s gems.

However, as I wrote about over on the Tropo blog, thanks to a developer suggesting we upload the Tropo WebAPI library to PyPI, I now finally have a PyPI account. My first (and currently only) submission is naturally:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/tropo-webapi-python/0.1.0

Now that I’ve done that, I may take some of my other modules and upload them as well.

The cool part about this is that developers can now very easily install the Tropo WebAPI library and use it with their free Tropo account to start creating apps that use voice, SMS, IM, or Twitter for real-time communications (or near real-time, anyway). All they have to do is use one of these commands:

easy_install tropo-webapi-python


pip install tropo-webapi-python

depending upon whether they prefer easy_install or pip to install packages.

Cool stuff... and I'm glad I'm finally on the PyPI train! :-)