How to Send Bulk SMS with Twilio and Laravel PHP

There are times when you have a large number of users and you need to update or notify them simultaneously via SMS. Maybe you run a membership site or personal blog. Whatever the case this tutorial will provide an efficient and easy way to achieve sending bulk SMS via your web app.

Technical Requirements

For this tutorial we’ll assume you already know or have the following:

A Terminal (Command Line)
Composer installed
Are familiar with PHP
Are familiar with Laravel (5+)
You have an existing Laravel (5+) project
You have a Twilio account and your credentials ready

Just in case you don’t have a Laravel project setup, this guide will help you to create a new Laravel project locally.

Install and Configure the Twilio Laravel SDK

The first thing we need to do is install the Twilio Laravel SDK which will provide the needed functions to get our bulk SMS app started. We’ll use the command line to achieve that. So in the command line type:

$ composer require twilio/sdk

Now that we have the SDK installed, we need to configure it to recognize our Twilio account. Open up your .env file and paste in the following code. Be sure to replace the variables with your Twilio credentials. TWILIO_FROM is your Twilio Number.

TWILIO_SID=ACXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
TWILIO_TOKEN=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
TWILIO_FROM=APXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

###Setup the Controller and View

We need a controller specially for our BulkSMS app, so paste in the command below to create a controller using Laravel’s artisan console.

$ php artisan make:controller BulkSmsController

Open the controller and include the Twilio class at the top:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Twilio\Rest\Client;
use Validator;

Next we will create a view file called bulksms.blade.php to make an HTML form to create the necessary fields for our bulk SMS app.

$ touch resources/views/bulksms.blade.php

Open up the newly created file located at resources/views/bulksms.blade.php and paste in the code below:

<html>
      <body>
         <form action='' method='post'>
              @csrf
                      @if($errors->any())
              <ul>
             @foreach($errors->all() as $error)
            <li>  </li>
             @endforeach
        @endif

        @if( session( 'success' ) )
             
        @endif

             <label>Phone numbers (seperate with a comma [,])</label>
             <input type='text' name='numbers' />

            <label>Message</label>
            <textarea name='message'></textarea>

            <button type='submit'>Send!</button>
      </form>
    </body>
</html>

Open up web.php located in the routes folder and paste in the following code at the bottom:

<?php

Route::view('/bulksms', 'bulksms');
Route::post('/bulksms', 'BulkSmsController@sendSms');

Now we will write a function to validate our HTML form and send out the text messages. Open up the BulkSmsController.php file located at app/Http/Controllers folder and type in the following code before the last curly brace.

<?php

        public function sendSms( Request $request )
    {
       // Your Account SID and Auth Token from twilio.com/console
       $sid    = env( 'TWILIO_SID' );
       $token  = env( 'TWILIO_TOKEN' );
       $client = new Client( $sid, $token );

       $validator = Validator::make($request->all(), [
           'numbers' => 'required',
           'message' => 'required'
       ]);

       if ( $validator->passes() ) {

           $numbers_in_arrays = explode( ',' , $request->input( 'numbers' ) );

           $message = $request->input( 'message' );
           $count = 0;

           foreach( $numbers_in_arrays as $number )
           {
               $count++;

               $client->messages->create(
                   $number,
                   [
                       'from' => env( 'TWILIO_FROM' ),
                       'body' => $message,
                   ]
               );
           }

           return back()->with( 'success', $count . " messages sent!" );
              
       } else {
           return back()->withErrors( $validator );
       }
   }

##Testing

To test your app open up your console in the project directory and type in following command:

$ php artisan serve

Now using your preferred browser visit http://localhost:8000/bulksms, fill out the form and submit.

Conclusion

Now that you have set up a Bulk SMS sending app you can see how easy it is extend the SMS functionality. This gives you an advantage of having your phone numbers stored in your own database.