External commands duplicate replies

[Justin Lorenzon]

Hi all,
I've just put together a simple system using a custom application to parse and generate a reply to SMSs. I'm using FrontlineSMS to make an http call to my app with the message details, and then having frontline autoreply with the response.

It works great except for one thing; after every valid reply, frontlinesms appears to be sending one or more blank replies to the same number. These blank messages show up in the frontlinesms Message log but I have no idea why.

Is there any way to get greater control of programmatic sending of messages, such as sending to multiple numbers etc (or aborting if the message body is blank..), and is this repeated blank message thing a known bug?

[Ben Whitaker]

Hi Justin,

we've not seen this before, but will put it into the testing of the next release.

What might be useful is a link to your http program, which would allow us to replicate your issue exactly, for example to see if there are a load of whitespace characters at the end?

Ben

[Deep]

Hi Justin,

I am a non IT guy and can you clarify me on few things.

1) I am looking for a auto-reply function where a external command can query the info that needs to be sent and it looks like this is possible as you did. Did you do that with SQLlite or did you set up your own MySQL DB?

2) Will it be possible to schedule a reply at couple of later dates for the same incoming SMS number for which we have set up the auto reply function using a external command.


Thanks,

Deep.

[Justin Lorenzon]

Just got back onto this to try and figure it out before Barcamp Phnom Penh!

@Ben - the problem seems to be FrontlineSMS vs the Motorola L6i. Once one message is received, frontline then receives 4-5 blank messages over the next few minutes. Because I was triggering on the keyword, it was reacting to these and sending back my web service's nonreply.

I THINK the blank messages are FrontlineSMS picking up on the delivery notifications that the phone gets once it's sent a message, but it's not reliable. To hack around this i've set the keyword to "W " and the ext. com. to "http://infomopticon.kinyei.org/message/?body=${keyword} ${message_content}" - feel free to try it yourself, it just summarizes wikipedia articles based on input. It works but ideally, the phone wouldn't notify of, or frontline would ignore, the message delivery notifications in the first place.


@Deep - yes that's exactly what I've been doing, but there are some additional steps in the scheme. FrontlineSMS receives the message and we trigger an external command HTTP request to a web service which does the work of deciding what to reply. In that case your sqlite or mysql db would be connected to the web service that frontline queries with its external command.

there is no reason that you couldn't schedule a reply in this way, so long as the application which you have built which frontlinesms contacts with the external command can in turn, when you want it to, initiate an sms send through frontlinesms. I haven't tried doing this yet.

[Alex Anderson]

Hi Justin,

I know Motorolas do exhibit some bizarre behaviour with delivery reports. If you send us your logs we can try to work out what's causing all these blank messages.

Another workaround could be to disable the delivery reports on your handset through the phone's UI.

Sounds like you're getting things working despite the hurdles :-)

Best wishes,

Alex