PySMS

Simple Python API that that allows you to send texts via SMTP with a best effort approach and process replies via IMAP

Motivation

I could afford shared hosting that gave me unlimited email accounts but I couldn't (didn't want to pay for) a SMS API such as Twilio so I decided to write my own given that this email to texting functionality exists already.

Prerequisites

The only Python Libraries needed are included in the standard Python libraries but incase you don't have them you can install them with the following command.

pip install smtplib imaplib email datetime time random inspect logging

Getting Started

Import PySMS into your Python file by including the following line

import PySMS

Usage

Not sure what IMAP and SMTP servers are? Read here

For only texting capability, initialize the client with your address, password, smtp_server, smtp_port and an optional ssl flag.

ps = PySMS.PySMS(address="[email protected]", password="password", smtp_server="smtp.example.com", smtp_port="465", ssl=True)

To enable the texting callback capability, you also have to initialize the client with your imap_server. ps = PySMS.PySMS(address="[email protected]", password="password", smtp_server="smtp.example.com", smtp_port="465", imap_server="imap.example.com", ssl=True)

Add numbers with corresponding carriers that you want the client to text whenever you call the text() method using the add_number() method.

ps.add_number("5551231234", "att")

Whenever you want to send a text with no callback functionality to all added numbers call the text() method

ps.text("This is a text!")

If you want to text just one number, set the optional number argument in the text() method

ps.text("This is an individual text", number="5551231234")

You can also add a callback to the text by setting the callback_function argument to your function. When the callback function is executed, the code expects and checks that the callback function accepts two arguments the first being the address of the associated hook and the second being the value of the reply See example below.

def test_callback(address, value):
	print "Callback function triggered by {address}!".format(address=address)
	print "Value was: " + value

ps.text("This is a text with a callback function!", callback=test_callback)

The receiver of the text will get the following message:

This is a text with a callback function!
Reply with identifier 1234 followed by a ":"

To which they can reply:

1234: Amazing

The callback function once the check_tracked() function finds the correct email will then print:

Callback function triggered by [email protected]!
Value was: Amazing

Additional settings such as the window time, delimiter and identifier length can be configured when you initialize the server object by setting the optional arguments window, delimiter and identifier_length repsectively.

Acknowledgements

Referenced https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-send-e-mail-to-sms-text/ for emails for each US carrier in self.carriers

Referenced https://yuji.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/python-imaplib-imap-example-with-gmail/ for how to process email_data coming back from imaplib in check_email()

Contributing

Pull requests and contributions are welcomed!

Support

For any questions or concerns, please create an issue or contact me.