Appointment Reminders with Ruby on Rails and Twilio

This template is part of Twilio CodeExchange. If you encounter any issues with this code, please open an issue at github.com/twilio-labs/code-exchange/issues.

About

Make sure your customers show up for their scheduled appointments with automated reminders. Deliver reminders via SMS text messages that don't get ignored like your e-mails.

Read the full tutorial here!

Implementations in other languages:

.NET	Java	Python	PHP	Node
Done	Done	Done	Done	Done

Set up

Requirements

• Ruby 2.6.x version.
• Sqlite.
• Node.js 10.x or 12.x version.
• A Twilio account - sign up

Twilio Account Settings

This application should give you a ready-made starting point for writing your own application. Before we begin, we need to collect all the config values we need to run the application:

Config Value	Description
TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID	Your primary Twilio account identifier - find this in the Console.
TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN	Used to authenticate - just like the above, you'll find this here.
TWILIO_NUMBER	A Twilio phone number in E.164 format - you can get one here

Local development

This project is built using Ruby on Rails Framework.

1. First clone this repository and cd into it.

   git clone git@github.com:TwilioDevEd/appointment-reminders-rails.git
   cd appointment-reminders-rails

2. Install the dependencies, the following command will install gems and Node dependencies.

   make install

3. Copy the .env.example file to .env, and edit it including your credentials for the Twilio API (found at https://www.twilio.com/console/account/settings). You will also need a Twilio Number.

   cp .env.example .env

   See Twilio Account Settings to locate the necessary environment variables.

4. Create the database and run migrations.

   make database

At this point you are ready to run the code:

5. First start the delayed jobs deamon, in the root execute the following command:

   ./bin/delayed_job start

   You can tail the log for this process:

   tail -f log/delayed_job.log

6. Then start the development server:

   make serve

7. Check it out at http://localhost:3000.

Docker

If you have Docker already installed on your machine, you can use our docker-compose.yml to setup your project.

1. Make sure you have the project cloned.
2. Setup the .env file as outlined in the Local Development steps.
3. Run docker-compose up.

Test

You can run the tests locally by typing:

$ bundle exec rails test

Cloud deployment

Additionally to trying out this application locally, you can deploy it to a variety of host services. Here is a small selection of them.

Please be aware that some of these might charge you for the usage or might make the source code for this application visible to the public. When in doubt research the respective hosting service first.

Service
Heroku

Resources

• The CodeExchange repository can be found here.

Contributing

This template is open source and welcomes contributions. All contributions are subject to our Code of Conduct.

Visit the project on GitHub

License

MIT

Disclaimer

No warranty expressed or implied. Software is as is.