As members of the Ruby guild, you will be working through the challenges of TwilioQuest using the Ruby programming language. This project is pre-configured to do some interesting Twilio stuff using Ruby and the light-weight Sinatra web framework.
We assume that before you begin, you will have Ruby and RubyGems installed on your system. If you are on OS X, this should already be done for you. On Windows, you will need to do some work.
Before you can run this project, you will need to set three system environment variables. These are:
TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID: Your Twilio "account SID" - it's like your username for the Twilio API. This and the auth token (below) can be found in the console.TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN: Your Twilio "auth token" - it's your password for the Twilio API. This and the account SID (above) can be found in the console.TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER: A Twilio number that you own, that can be used for making calls and sending messages. You can find a list of phone numbers you control (and buy another one, if necessary) in the console.
For Mac and Linux, environment variables can be set by opening a terminal window and typing the following three commands - replace all the characters after the = with values from your Twilio account:
export TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID=ACXXXXXXXXX
export TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN=XXXXXXXXX
export TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER=+16518675309
To make these changes persist for every new terminal (on OS X), you can edit the file ~/.bash_profile to contain the three commands above. This will set these environment variables for every subsequent session. Once you have edited the file to contain these commands, run source ~/.bash_profile in the terminal to set up these variables.
On Windows, the easiest way to set permanent environment variables (as of Windows 8) is using the setx command. Note that there is no =, just the key and value separated by a space:
setx TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID ACXXXXXXXXX
setx TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN XXXXXXXXX
setx TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER +16518675309
Download the project source code directly or clone the repository on GitHub. Navigate to the folder with the source code on your machine in a terminal window.
You will first need to install the application's dependencies. You can do this manually using RubyGems, or you can install them using Bundler and the include gem file. To install via bundler, type:
bundle install
To install the gems manually (if you don't know what bundler is and/or don't have it installed), type the following commands:
gem install twilio-ruby
gem install sinatra
Now, you should be able to launch the application. From your terminal, run ruby app.rb. This should launch your sinatra application on port 4567 - visit that URL on your local host. Enter your mobile number in the fields provided, and test both SMS text messages and phone calls being sent to the mobile number you provide.
This is but your first step into a larger world. Return to TwilioQuest to continue your adventure. Huzzah!