I have a Java project and I would like to get notified of certain runtime events by receiving a message in my personal Whatsapp account. I was wondering if this is even possible and if so, how can I accomplish this? Is there an API or Java library that I should be aware of?
Thank you for your help.
WhatsApp Inc. doesn't allow sending messages programmatically for personal accounts. But WhatsApp has started taking requests for business accounts in which they might allow certain programming features like integrating with your own code for sending messages etc.
I had once written a program using selenium to send message via WhatsApp Web. It worked perfectly fine. This was for experimental purpose only.
There are few 3rd-party libraries available but you run the risk of getting your number blocked. WhatsApp tries to detect if you are running such libraries. And if they catch then they will immediately block the mobile number.
Selenium method doesn't have such risk. Because you will be using WhatsApp Web only (via selenium).
For your application, the method suggested by #C-Sway is good enough.
You might want to look at Telegram as an application for this.
https://telegram.org/
AFAIK whatsapp will be tied to a mobile/cell number, which will hinder you from the outset, whilst creating your own private telegram channel to monitor automation on your site is very simple, they encourage bot use for this kind of thing and you'll find guides on how to create them below:
https://core.telegram.org/bots/samples
Additionally Telegram can be installed on any phone and the notifications are very reliable and customisable. Enjoy.
I would like to connect my mobile phone in USB debugging mode and then send sms through some java code, so that the text is actually send through my cellphone using my provider sms plan. I am without any idea. I googled but could not get anything useful. Any idea, approach or link to some tutorial would be very helpful.
I'd suggest SMS lib for sending SMSs via your cell phone using Java code.
But if you are open to other ideas, I'd suggest to use a public webservice that sends in your place your SMSs, you can use for example nexmo, they have very good api and charges very cheap SMS. You have an initial credit for starting.
I would like to develop an application which users interact with on an sms platform. Its more of an experiment to learn something new. Any pointers on technology to study and things to look at as pre-requisites before diving in? Thanks
First, you'll need a device that can act as a wireless modem to provide you with a connection for the gateway. If your cellphone supports tethering and you have an SMS plan, it would be pretty easy to use that. Otherwise you'll need to get a modem and a plan to go with it. I'm not sure how close to the metal you want to get, but you can then use SMSLib to listen on the device and wait for incoming messages. With this setup you can both send and receive messages. It is also possible to use something like Minicom to send commands directly to the modem for experimenting.
As another approach, you could also use a vendor such as Clickatell as an API for interacting with an SMS gateway. They seem to be able to handle both sending and receiving SMS on behalf of their clients.
You can easily do this with something like Twilio (where I work). Here is a howto for sending/receiving in PHP using just HTTP POST requests: http://www.twilio.com/docs/quickstart/sms/
We plan to integrate sending of SMS and making calls to our desktop and web applications. Both are written in Java.
As for only sending SMS we know about great gateway from Clickatell. But ideally, we would like to use one service similar to it, but which supports Voice Calls and SMS.
What service/gateway could you recommend? Here are our main requirements:
Reliable
Work world wild (if not, at least Europe operators must be supported)
Providing external API (for SMS) and reusable components (for Voice Calls) which can be integrated with Desktop and Web Java-based applications
Providing sending SMS and making Voice Calls
If there is no service which supports SMS and Voice Calls, we will try to integrate two various services with our products. So, if you know reliable services either for sending SMS or making Voice Calls, please, write about them also. Thanks for your answers.
I would try Twilio as well as OpenMarket
Do you need to use some kind of provider?
Can you setup your own SMS server?
Does any open source solutions exist?
I am an SMS newbie so any insight on how this is accomplished would be great. I am partial to Java but any language is fine.
This is easy. Yes, you need a "sms gateway" provider. There are a lot out there. These companies provide APIs for you to send/receive SMS.
e.g. the German company Mobilant provides an easy API. If you want to receive a SMS just program a simple PHP / JSP / s.th.else dynamic web page and let Mobilant call it.
e.g.
Mobilant receives a SMS for you
Mobilant calls your web page http://yourpage.com/receive.php?message=...
You do what you need to do
You really don't want to setup your own SMS Server or Center ;-) This is really expensive, takes months to setup and costs some nice ferraris.
Use a provider and pay per SMS. It's the cheapest and fastest way.
I used kannel on a linux box with an old mobile phone connected via a serial cable to the box. Got a pre-paid card in the phone as I was using it for private use only. Worked like a charm!
You might take a look at Gammu if you're running on a Linux box:
http://www.gammu.org
Using Gammu, you can configure it to periodically poll a mobile phone for new SMS messages. When Gammu finds new messages, it can store them in an SQL database. You can then write another program to periodically poll the database and take action on new messages.
Using this general setup I successfully deployed a homemade 2-way SMS application. I configured Gammu to pull messages off of the phone over Bluetooth. Gammu placed them in a MySQL database, which I had a Tomcat web application periodically poll for new messages. When a new message was found, the system processed the message.
This is a somewhat "duct-tape and bailing wire" setup, but it worked quite well and was more reliable than many of the "professional" SMS gateways I tested beforehand. YMMV.
We've used mBlox (http://www.mblox) in the past, as they provide comprehensive international coverage, premium SMS, various levels of Quality of Service vs Price, and a solid Java-based API for both inbound and outbound SMS.
You will need an SMS gateway, googling "SMS gateway" will reveal many. I have used http://www.clickatell.com/products/sms_gateway.php with great success.
I do not know of any open source implementations, but will be monitoring this thread in case someone else does!
First, you need an SMS gateway. Take a look at Kannel SMS Gateway.
Agreed with Kannel. You can set it up on a LAMP server with a GSM modem too.
I'm not up with Java, so here's a nice guide on how to do it in Ruby on Rails: http://www.lukeredpath.co.uk/2007/8/29/sending-sms-messages-from-your-rails-application
If you want to send 'true' SMS you'll need to use an SMS gateway, (use of one is outlined in the above guide).
You can use MMS to send messages, to an email address that looks something like 1234567890# messages.whatever.com. You can use mail functions to do this. There's some information about that here: http://contentdeveloper.com/2006/06/open-source-sms-text-messaging-application/
TextMarks provides a service where they map an incoming SMS to them to an HTTP GET to a URL you provide and then send the response back as another SMS. They don't charge you if you let them add some advertising to the reply SMS. The problem is they don't provide this for free anymore for T-Mobile due to T-Mobile charging them. I'd be willing to pay per message, but they charge $0.20 per user-month, which is rather steep. Anyone know of anyone who provides this service?
You actually don't need an SMS gateway; nearly every cell phone can send/receive SMS messages to/from any email address. I built an SMS service (http://www.txtreg.net) using Nearly Free Speech's ability to forward email to a URL as a POST request. User sends a text to an email address, PHP script processes it, and sends an email right back to their phone.
Try SMS Enabler software. To receive SMS messages it uses a 3G/4G/GSM USB modem connected to a pc. It can forward incoming messages to a URL over HTTP, or store them in a database table, or write them to a CSV file, in real-time.