Building a SMS opt in and opt out system in Symfony

Welcome to a simple Symfony tutorial on using Clickatell's API to have your user opt in and out of SMS marketing/notifications.

Getting started

First step is to create a new Symfony project – here I used the composer method.

$ composer create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition sms_opt_in_and_out

We'll also need the Clickatell php library installed into the project - easy with composer.

$ o	composer require arcturial/clickatell

Next you'll need to create a bundle to do your work in, I called mine Clickatell/SMSOptInAndOutBundle with ClickatellSMSOptInAndOutBundle as the "short" hand name - Just follow the steps prompted.

$ php app/console generate:bundle --namespace=Clickatell/SMSOptInAndOutBundle

Lets get coding

First add the bundles to the AppKernal - our own and the Clickatell one.

    $bundles = array(
        new Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\FrameworkBundle(),
        new Symfony\Bundle\SecurityBundle\SecurityBundle(),
        new Symfony\Bundle\TwigBundle\TwigBundle(),
        new Symfony\Bundle\MonologBundle\MonologBundle(),
        new Symfony\Bundle\SwiftmailerBundle\SwiftmailerBundle(),
        new Symfony\Bundle\AsseticBundle\AsseticBundle(),
        new Doctrine\Bundle\DoctrineBundle\DoctrineBundle(),
        new Sensio\Bundle\FrameworkExtraBundle\SensioFrameworkExtraBundle(),
        new AppBundle\AppBundle(),
        // Our new Bundles
        new Clickatell\SMSOptInAndOutBundle\ClickatellSMSOptInAndOutBundle(),
        new Clickatell\Symfony\ClickatellBundle(),
    );

We also need some config for the Clickatell bundle - I opted to created a new file and import it

    - { resource: clickatell.yml }

I decided to create 2 tables for my project - on for logging incoming text messages (MO) and one for the subscribers. See the classed in src/Clickatell/SMSOptInOutBundle/Entity/* for more detail.

You can created them manualy or my using this command:

$ php app/console doctrine:database:create

Now I kept it simple and created two controllers - one for testing purposes and one as the callback url from Clickatell. See

Clickatell/SMSOptInAndOutBundle/Controller/CallbackController.php

Clickatell/SMSOptInAndOutBundle/Controller/DefaultController.php

The callback controller user the Keyword Manager and it's strategies to identify and save/remove subscribers from the database.

see Clickatell/SMSOptInAndOutBundle/Keyword/* for more detail.

Don't forget your configs for routing:

Clickatell/SMSOptInAndOutBundle/Resources/config/routing.yml