Programmable Messaging PHP Quickstart without Composer

You can sign up for a free Twilio trial account here.

• When you sign up, you'll be asked to verify your personal phone number. This helps Twilio verify your identity and also allows you to send test messages to your phone from your Twilio account while in trial mode.
• Once you verify your number, you'll be asked a series of questions to customize your experience.
• Once you finish the onboarding flow, you'll arrive at your project dashboard in the Twilio Console. This is where you'll be able to access your Account SID, authentication token, find a Twilio phone number, and more.

If you don't currently own a Twilio phone number with SMS functionality, you'll need to purchase one. After navigating to the Buy a Number page, check the SMS box and click Search.

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You'll then see a list of available phone numbers and their capabilities. Find a number that suits your fancy and click Buy to add it to your account.

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We'll need to use the Twilio CLI (command line interface) for a few tasks, so let's install that next.

brew tap twilio/brew && brew install twilio

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wget -qO- https://twilio-cli-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/twilio_pub.asc \
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  | sudo apt-key add -
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sudo touch /etc/apt/sources.list.d/twilio.list
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echo 'deb https://twilio-cli-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/apt/ /' \
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  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/twilio.list
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sudo apt update
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sudo apt install -y twilio

Run twilio login to get the Twilio CLI connected to your account. Visit the Twilio Console, and under Account Info, you'll find your unique Account SID and Auth Token to provide to the CLI.

Next, we need to install PHP and the Twilio PHP Helper Library.

To send your first SMS, let's make sure you're set up with PHP and able to install Twilio's PHP Helper library. This quickstart will show you how to install packages manually.

When doing web development in PHP, we strongly suggest using Composer for package management. You can try the standard PHP SMS Quickstart if interested.

If you're using a Mac or NIX machine, you may have PHP already installed. In your favorite terminal, run:

php --version

If not installed, follow the PHP installation instructions.

If you're using a Windows machine, follow the official PHP tutorial to install PHP.

You'll need to install the Twilio PHP Helper Library in the directory where you will complete the quickstart.

1. Create a new project directory, or navigate to your project's working directory.
2. In that directory, download the most recent version of the Twilio PHP Helper Library from Github.
3. Unzip the PHP helper library in the directory.

Now that we have PHP and twilio-php-main installed manually, we can make a single API request and send an outbound text message from a Twilio phone number.

Create and open a new file called send_sms.php and type or paste in this code sample:

Send an outbound SMS using PHP and the Twilio PHP Helper Library installed without Composer.

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<?php
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// Include the bundled autoload from the Twilio PHP Helper Library
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require __DIR__ . '/twilio-php-main/src/Twilio/autoload.php';
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use Twilio\Rest\Client;
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// Your Account SID and Auth Token from twilio.com/console
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// To set up environmental variables, see http://twil.io/secure
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$account_sid = getenv('TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID');
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$auth_token = getenv('TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN');
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// In production, these should be environment variables. E.g.:
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// $auth_token = $_ENV["TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID"]
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// A Twilio number you own with SMS capabilities
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$twilio_number = "+15017122661";
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$client = new Client($account_sid, $auth_token);
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$client->messages->create(
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    // Where to send a text message (your cell phone?)
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    '+15558675310',
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    array(
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        'from' => $twilio_number,
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        'body' => 'I sent this message in under 10 minutes!'
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    )
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);

In the code, switch the placeholders in account_sid and auth_token with your Twilio credentials. Visit Twilio Console to find your unique Account SID and Auth Token to substitute.

Replace the values for account_sid and auth_token with your unique values.

Earlier, you purchased an SMS-enabled phone number. Paste that number into the twilio_number variable using E.164 formatting:

[+][country code][phone number including area code]

For example, +18005551212.

The first value in the API call to create() is the outgoing phone number, currently set to +15558675310. This can be any phone number that can receive texts... but use a number you control to witness the magic! As above, use E.164 formatting for this number.

Save the file then run the script:

php send_sms.php

Assuming all the values are correct, you should already see the SMS from your Twilio number on your phone!

Are your customers in the U.S. or Canada? You can also send MMS messages by adding just a single line of code. Check out this guide to sending MMS to see how.

When someone sends an SMS to your Twilio phone number, Twilio makes an HTTP request to your server asking for instructions on what to do next. For this quickstart, we'll reply to the sender with a note about how we're sending our SMS reply.

We'll again use the Twilio PHP Library, then use PHP's built-in development web server in combination with a tool called ngrok to instruct Twilio how to handle the message. Create a new file reply_sms.php in the same directory as send_sms.php, open it, then copy and paste or type the following code.

(Note: if you do not use the same directory, please follow the PHP Helper Library install step above)

Reply to an inbound SMS using the Twilio PHP Helper Library installed manually and TwiML.

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<?php
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// Include the bundled autoload from the Twilio PHP Helper Library
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require __DIR__ . '/twilio-php-main/src/Twilio/autoload.php';
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use Twilio\TwiML\MessagingResponse;
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// Set the content-type to XML to send back TwiML from the PHP Helper Library
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header("content-type: text/xml");
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$response = new MessagingResponse();
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$response->message(
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    "I'm using the Twilio PHP library to respond to this SMS!"
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);
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echo $response;

Save the file, then start the PHP development server with:

php -S localhost:8000

In your favorite browser, open the URL http://localhost:8000/reply_sms.php.

If all went smoothly, you should see XML in your browser with our message. And, yes, that's all the code needed - there are just a few more steps before everything is ready to go. Next, let's expose this endpoint to Twilio.

We'll use ngrok to set up a tunnel from the public internet to your localhost. This will let us use a public URL as the webhook for your application.

First, download and configure ngrok.

Next, run this command to have ngrok set up a tunnel to your localhost:

ngrok http 8000

This will start an ngrok tunnel. Copy down the Forwarding URL that ends with ngrok.io.

Then, you need to configure your Twilio phone number to call your webhook URL whenever a new message comes in:

1. Go to Phone Numbers > Active Numbers in the Twilio Console.
2. Select the SMS-enabled Twilio number you want to use.
3. For the A MESSAGE COMES IN webhook, enter the ngrok URL you copied down earlier. Append /reply_sms.php to the end of the URL.

Now that everything is glued together, it's time to test.

Send a text message from your mobile phone to your Twilio phone number. You'll see a couple of things happen very quickly -

1. Your PHP dev server will note a new connection
2. Twilio will forward your response back as an SMS!

Now that you know the basics of sending and receiving SMS and MMS text messages with PHP, you might want to check out these resources.

• Our extensive API Reference documentation for Twilio SMS
• Learn how to create an SMS conversation in PHP
• Track the delivery status of your outbound messages

We hope you enjoyed the quickstart, and definitely can't wait to see what you build!