SMS Sentiment Analysis with IBM Tone Analyzer using PHP

PHP script for callback to return sentiment analysis from the IBM Tone Analyzer to grade the contents of an SMS message sent through a Nexmo number. This example script uses Composer to include slim/slim, slim/psr7, guzzlehttp/guzzle, and vlucas/phpdotenv.

IBM Tone Analyzer Service

Reference: https://www.ibm.com/watson/services/tone-analyzer/ API Docs: https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/tone-analyzer GitHub: https://github.com/watson-developer-cloud/node-sdk#tone-analyzer

Register for the IBM Tone Analyzer service. Once created, make a note of the API Key and URL for use later. These can be found in the Manage page of the IBM Cloud dashboard after login.

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Note for IBM Cloud deploy: Once the app has deployed, go to the app dashboard and update the environment variables with these credentials under "Runtime > Environment Variables"

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Running the App

This sample app uses a .env file to provide the API key and URL to the IBM Tone Analyzer API.

Copy the provided .env.example file to a new file called .env:

cp .env.example > .env

Then update the values with those from the IBM Tone Analyzer service Manage page, and then save.

TONE_ANALYZER_IAM_APIKEY=
TONE_ANALYZER_URL=

Also, expose the application to the internet using tools like ngrok. To see how, check out this guide.

Use Composer to install dependencies

Both methods of serving the app, shown below, do require the use of Composer to install dependencies and set up the autoloader.

Assuming a Composer global installation. https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md#globally

composer install

Docker Method

To run the app using Docker-Compose, run the following command in a terminal:

docker-compose up

This will create a new container and serve it from http://localhost:8080.

PHP Built-in Webserver Method

Alternatively, it can be ran using the PHP built-in web server for testing purposes. This method requires us to run Composer for installation of dependencies.

Launching the PHP built-in webserver

To serve the app run the following command in a terminal:

php -S localhost:8080

Linking the app to Nexmo

For this example app a Nexmo number and SMS webhook setup is needed.

This can be achieved with the Nexmo CLI. Install the CLI by following these instructions.

Rent a New Virtual Number

Renting a number will need to be in place. This can also be achieved using the CLI by running this command:

nexmo number:buy --country_code US

Adding the SMS Webhook

Update the number created with the URL of the hosted or local server.

nexmo link:sms phone_number https://my-hostname/message

Try it out

With the example PHP application running in the terminal, send various SMS messages to the virtual number. The terminal will output the response from IBM Tone Analyzer.

Extend

This app prints out to the console. For integration with an application, extend the analyzeTone function to suit your needs.