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This is a deprecated project.

Please go to the Twilio Voice JavaScript SDK quickstart for Python

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Twilio Client Quickstart for Python

About

This application should give you a ready-made starting point for writing your own voice apps with Twilio Client. This application uses the lightweight Flask Framework.

Set Up

Requirements

• Python 3.6, 3.7 or 3.8 version.

Twilio Account Settings

Before we begin, we need to collect all the config values we need to run the application.

Config Value	Description
TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID	Your primary Twilio account identifier - find this in the console here.
TWILIO_TWIML_APP_SID	The TwiML application with a voice URL configured to access your server running this app - create one in the console here. Also, you will need to configure the Voice "REQUEST URL" on the TwiML app once you've got your server up and running.
TWILIO_CALLER_ID	A Twilio phone number in E.164 format - you can get one here
API_KEY / API_SECRET	Your REST API Key information needed to create an Access Token - create one here.

Local development

1. First, clone this repository and cd into it.

   git clone https://github.com/TwilioDevEd/client-quickstart-python.git
   cd client-quickstart-python

2. Create the virtual environment, load it and install the dependencies.

   make install

3. Create a configuration file for your application and edit the .env file. The application runs by default in production environment. Feel free to update DEBUG to True if needed.

   cp .env.example .env

   See Twilio Account Settings to locate the necessary environment variables.

   Windows (PowerShell)

   Begin by creating a configuration file for your application:

   cp .env.example.ps1 .env.ps1

   Edit .env.ps1 with the four configuration parameters we gathered from above. "Dot-source" the file in PowerShell like so:

   . .\.env.ps1

   This assumes you will run the application in the same PowerShell session. If not, edit the .env.ps1 and uncomment the [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable calls. After re-running the script, the environment variables will be peramently set for your user account.

4. Run the application, will run on port 5000.

   make serve

5. Navigate to http://localhost:5000

6. Expose your application to the wider internet using ngrok. You can click here for more details. This step is important because the application won't work as expected if you run it through localhost.

   ngrok http 5000

7. When ngrok starts up, it will assign a unique URL to your tunnel. It might be something like https://asdf456.ngrok.io. Take note of this.

8. Configure your TwiML app's Voice "REQUEST URL" to be your ngrok URL plus /voice. For example:

   

   Note: You must set your webhook urls to the https ngrok tunnel created. You should now be ready to rock! Make some phone calls. Open it on another device and call yourself. Note that Twilio Client requires WebRTC enabled browsers, so Edge and Internet Explorer will not work for testing. We'd recommend Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox instead.

   

That's it!

Docker

If you have Docker already installed on your machine, you can use our docker-compose.yml to setup your project.

1. Make sure you have the project cloned.
2. Setup the .env file as outlined in the Local Development steps.
3. Run docker-compose up.
4. Follow the steps in Local Development on how to expose your port to Twilio using a tool like ngrok and configure the remaining parts of your application.

Tests

You can run the tests locally with the following command. Before running, make sure the virtual environment is activated.

$ python3 -m pytest

Cloud deployment

Additionally to trying out this application locally, you can deploy it to a variety of host services. Here is a small selection of them.

Please be aware that some of these might charge you for the usage or might make the source code for this application visible to the public. When in doubt research the respective hosting service first.

Service
Heroku

Resources

• The CodeExchange repository can be found here.

Contributing

This template is open source and welcomes contributions. All contributions are subject to our Code of Conduct.

License

MIT

Disclaimer

No warranty expressed or implied. Software is as is.