Integrating Twilio function with Airtable for daily SMS response evaluation

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1

Hey everyone! I’m new here and could use some help with my Twilio and Airtable setup.

I’ve got a system that sends out daily SMS messages to a group of people. Now I want to use a Twilio function to check an Airtable base every day and evaluate the responses to these messages.

Here’s what I think needs to happen:

  1. The Twilio function checks the Airtable base for today’s records
  2. It looks at the response text
  3. It compares the response to what we’re expecting
  4. It sends back a specific message from the Airtable base, depending on whether the response matches or not

I’ve started working on the function code, but I’m not sure if it’s right. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

const airtable = require('airtable');
const twilio = require('twilio');

exports.handler = function(context, event, callback) {
  const db = new airtable({apiKey: context.AIRTABLE_KEY}).base(context.AIRTABLE_BASE);
  const response = new twilio.twiml.MessagingResponse();
  const today = new Date();
  const userReply = event.Body.toLowerCase();

  db('daily_questions')
    .select({filterByFormula: `date = '${today.toISOString().split('T')[0]}'`})
    .firstPage((err, records) => {
      if (err) {
        callback(err);
        return;
      }
      
      const record = records[0];
      if (record.get('expected_answer') === userReply) {
        response.message(record.get('correct_message'));
      } else {
        response.message(record.get('incorrect_message'));
      }
      
      callback(null, response);
    });
};

Can anyone help me figure out if I’m on the right track? Thanks!

2

Your approach seems sound, but there are a few improvements you could consider. First, implement error handling for cases where no record exists for the current date. This will prevent potential crashes. Additionally, you might want to sanitize and validate the user’s input before comparison to ensure accurate matching. Consider implementing a fuzzy matching algorithm for more flexible response evaluation. Lastly, don’t forget to update the Airtable record with the user’s response and the outcome for tracking purposes. These enhancements will make your system more robust and provide valuable data for future analysis.

3

I’ve implemented a similar system, and I can share some insights. Your code is a good start, but you might want to consider rate limiting. Airtable has API usage limits, so if you’re sending a lot of SMS messages, you could hit those pretty quickly. I’d suggest implementing a queue system or using a caching layer to reduce API calls.

Also, think about time zones. If your users are spread across different time zones, you’ll need to account for that when checking for ‘today’s’ records. You might want to store user time zones in Airtable and adjust your date comparisons accordingly.

Lastly, consider adding some logging. It’ll be invaluable for debugging and tracking usage patterns. You could log each interaction to another Airtable base or a separate logging service. This has helped me immensely in troubleshooting and improving my own SMS response system.

4

hey amelial, welcome to the forum! your code looks pretty good, but you might wanna add some error handling for when there’s no record for today. also, consider using async/await instead of callbacks for cleaner code. good luck with your project!