<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><title>Full Stack Python</title><link href="https://www.fullstackpython.com/" rel="alternate"></link><link href="https://www.fullstackpython.com/feeds/all.atom.xml" rel="self"></link><id>https://www.fullstackpython.com/</id><updated>2016-06-19T00:00:00-04:00</updated><entry><title>Configuring Python 3, Pyramid and Gunicorn on Ubuntu 16.04</title><link href="https://www.fullstackpython.com/python-3-pyramid-gunicorn-ubuntu-1604-xenial-xerus.html" rel="alternate"></link><updated>2016-06-19T00:00:00-04:00</updated><author><name>Matt Makai</name></author><id>tag:www.fullstackpython.com,2016-06-19:python-3-pyramid-gunicorn-ubuntu-1604-xenial-xerus.html</id><summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="/ubuntu.html"&gt;Canonical's Ubuntu 16.04 Long Term Support (LTS)&lt;/a&gt; Linux

&lt;a href="/operating-systems.html"&gt;operating system&lt;/a&gt;, also known as "Xenial Xerus",

was released in April 2016. It is the first Ubuntu release to include

&lt;a href="/python-2-or-3.html"&gt;Python 3&lt;/a&gt; instead of Python 2 as its default Python

installation.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="/pyramid.html"&gt;Pyramid&lt;/a&gt; web framework has long supported Python 3.

With just a few short steps we can start a new &lt;a href="/pyramid.html"&gt;Pyramid&lt;/a&gt;

project and run it with

&lt;a href="/green-unicorn-gunicorn.html"&gt;Green Unicorn (Gunicorn)&lt;/a&gt; on Ubuntu 16.04.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Required Tools&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our project requires Ubuntu 16.04 plus several code libraries. You do not

need to install these tools yet - we will get to them in turn as the

walkthrough progresses. Our requirements and their current versions are:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04/"&gt;Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="/why-use-python.html"&gt;Python version 3.5&lt;/a&gt; (default in Ubuntu 16.04)&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="/pyramid.html"&gt;Pyramid web framework&lt;/a&gt; version

&lt;a href="http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/1.7-branch/"&gt;1.7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="/green-unicorn-gunicorn.html"&gt;Gunicorn&lt;/a&gt; version

&lt;a href="http://docs.gunicorn.org/en/stable/news.html"&gt;19.6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/waitress/en/latest/"&gt;Waitress&lt;/a&gt;

version 0.9.0&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you are developing on Mac OS X or Windows, you can use

virtualization software such

as &lt;a href="https://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/"&gt;Parallels&lt;/a&gt; or

&lt;a href="https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads"&gt;VirtualBox&lt;/a&gt; with the

&lt;a href="http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04/"&gt;Ubuntu .iso file&lt;/a&gt;. Either the amd64 or

i386 version of 16.04 is fine. While creating this I used the amd64 version. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A desktop screen like this one appears when you boot up Ubuntu.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160619-ubuntu-pyramid-gunicorn/ubuntu-desktop.jpg" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Open a new terminal window so we can be ready to install required system

packages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Install System Packages&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The precise Python version can be shown using the &lt;code&gt;python&lt;/code&gt; command with the

&lt;code&gt;--version&lt;/code&gt; argument.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;python3 --version

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We can also view where the &lt;code&gt;python3&lt;/code&gt; program is installed on Ubuntu using the

&lt;code&gt;which&lt;/code&gt; command.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;which python3

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160619-ubuntu-pyramid-gunicorn/which-python.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Ubuntu requires a few system packages before we can properly install Pyramid

and Gunicorn. When we run the &lt;code&gt;apt&lt;/code&gt; command to install system packages we

will be prompted for the superuser password. Restricted system access is

necessary to modify files within the system folders.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;sudo apt-get install virtualenv python-pip python3-dev

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160619-ubuntu-pyramid-gunicorn/install-packages.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Press &lt;code&gt;y&lt;/code&gt; then return to let the system package installation run.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160619-ubuntu-pyramid-gunicorn/packages-installed.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The required system packages are installed. We can now install the

Python-specific dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Set up Virtualenv&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In the previous section, &lt;a href="https://virtualenv.pypa.io/en/latest/"&gt;virtualenv&lt;/a&gt;

and &lt;a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pip"&gt;pip&lt;/a&gt; were installed to handle our

&lt;a href="/application-dependencies.html"&gt;application dependencies&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Create a directory for the virtualenvs. Then create a new virtualenv.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;# the tilde &amp;quot;~&amp;quot; specifies the user&amp;#39;s home directory, like /home/matt

cd ~

mkdir venvs

# specify the system python3 installation

virtualenv --python=/usr/bin/python3 venvs/pyramidproj

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Activate the virtualenv.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;source ~/venvs/pyramidproj/bin/activate

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our prompt will change after we properly activate the virtualenv to

something like &lt;code&gt;(pyramidproj) matt@ubuntu:~$&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160619-ubuntu-pyramid-gunicorn/venv-activated.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our virtualenv is activated with Python 3. We can install whatever

dependencies we want, in our case Pyramid and Gunicorn. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Install Python Packages&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We can install Pyramid, Gunicorn and Waitress into our virtualenv using

the &lt;code&gt;pip&lt;/code&gt; command.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;pip install pyramid gunicorn waitress

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;No errors like we see in the following screenshot is a good sign.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160619-ubuntu-pyramid-gunicorn/good-sign.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Pyramid comes with a project starter template creation tool named &lt;code&gt;pcreate&lt;/code&gt;.

Run &lt;code&gt;pcreate&lt;/code&gt; to generate the boilerplate for a new Pyramid project named

"pyramidproj".&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;pcreate -s starter pyramidproj

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Use the &lt;code&gt;cd&lt;/code&gt; (change directory) command to move into the new folder.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;cd ~/pyramidproj

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A slew of new files have been created within the "pyramidproj" directory.

These are the basic files you can customize for the web application you want

to build. A good resource for understanding and modifying these files is

to follow the

&lt;a href="http://pyramid-stevepiercy.readthedocs.io/en/stable/quick_tutorial/index.html"&gt;quick tutorial for Pyramid&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For now, we just want to use Gunicorn to run our starter pyramidproj app.

Install pyramidproj into your virtualenv using the &lt;code&gt;python&lt;/code&gt; command on

&lt;code&gt;setup.py&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;python setup.py develop

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Now we can run our app with Gunicorn. Pyramid is a

&lt;a href="http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/latest/api/paster.html"&gt;paste&lt;/a&gt;-compatible

framework, so we use the &lt;code&gt;--paste&lt;/code&gt; argument to run the WSGI server with

the "development.ini" configuration file. In addition, the &lt;code&gt;-b&lt;/code&gt; argument

tells Gunicorn which port number to bind on when the server starts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;gunicorn --paste development.ini -b :8080

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160619-ubuntu-pyramid-gunicorn/gunicorn-run.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Cool, we can bring up our starter Pyramid project up in the web browser at

the &lt;code&gt;localhost:8000&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;127.0.0.1:8000&lt;/code&gt; address.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160619-ubuntu-pyramid-gunicorn/it-works.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Time to develop a full-fledged web application with &lt;a href="/pyramid.html"&gt;Pyramid&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Ready to Develop with Pyramid&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Now you have a simple setup to develop Pyramid web apps using Gunicorn as

the &lt;a href="/wsgi-servers.html"&gt;WSGI server&lt;/a&gt; on Ubuntu 16.04. If you need a

full step-by-step tutorial to deploy your Python web application to a

production environment, check out the

&lt;a href="http://www.deploypython.com/"&gt;Full Stack Python Guide to Deployments book&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To decide what to do next with your Python project, check out the

&lt;a href="/table-of-contents.html"&gt;Full Stack Python table of contents&lt;/a&gt; page.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;See something wrong in this post? Fork

&lt;a href="https://github.com/makaimc/fullstackpython.com/blob/gh-pages/source/content/posts/160619-pyramid-gunicorn-ubuntu-1604.markdown"&gt;this page's source on GitHub&lt;/a&gt;

and submit a pull request.&lt;/p&gt;</summary></entry><entry><title>Replying to SMS Text Messages with Python and Bottle</title><link href="https://www.fullstackpython.com/reply-sms-text-messages-python-bottle.html" rel="alternate"></link><updated>2016-06-05T00:00:00-04:00</updated><author><name>Matt Makai</name></author><id>tag:www.fullstackpython.com,2016-06-05:reply-sms-text-messages-python-bottle.html</id><summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Python applications can

&lt;a href="/blog/send-sms-text-messages-python.html"&gt;easily send SMS&lt;/a&gt;

by using a &lt;a href="/application-programming-interfaces.html"&gt;web API&lt;/a&gt;.

Web apps built with the &lt;a href="/bottle.html"&gt;Bottle&lt;/a&gt; framework can also reply

to incoming text messages by handling inbound HTTP POST webhooks. In

this post we'll quickly walk through how to set up a Bottle web app to

handle SMS data in the form of HTTP POST requests.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Tools We'll Need&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This tutorial works with either &lt;a href="/python-2-or-3.html"&gt;Python 2 or 3&lt;/a&gt;,

although Python 3 is recommended by the community for new applications.

Install one of those two Python versions on your system to use for this

walkthrough. We also need:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/"&gt;pip&lt;/a&gt; and

&lt;a href="https://virtualenv.pypa.io/en/latest/"&gt;virtualenv&lt;/a&gt; to handle

&lt;a href="/application-dependencies.html"&gt;application dependencies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="/bottle.html"&gt;Bottle&lt;/a&gt; web framework&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://ngrok.com/"&gt;Ngrok&lt;/a&gt; for localhost tunneling to our Bottle

application while it's running on our local development environment&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Free &lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/try-twilio"&gt;Twilio account&lt;/a&gt; to use their

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/rest/sending-messages"&gt;SMS web API&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Open source

&lt;a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/twilio"&gt;Twilio Python helper library&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Check out the guide on

&lt;a href="/blog/python-3-bottle-gunicorn-ubuntu-1604-xenial-xerus.html"&gt;how to set up Python 3, Bottle and Gunicorn on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS&lt;/a&gt;

if you need help getting your

&lt;a href="/development-environments.html"&gt;development environment&lt;/a&gt;

configured.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Application Dependency Installation&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our application will use a helper code library to reply to inbound SMS.

Bottle and the helper library are installable from

&lt;a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi"&gt;PyPI&lt;/a&gt; into a virtualenv. Open your terminal

and use the &lt;code&gt;virtualenv&lt;/code&gt; command to create a new virtualenv:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;virtualenv replysms

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Invoke the virtualenv's &lt;code&gt;activate&lt;/code&gt; script, which makes it the "active"

Python installation. Note that you need to do this in every terminal window

that you want this virtualenv to be used.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;source replysms/bin/activate

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The command prompt will change after activating the virtualenv:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160605-reply-sms-python-bottle/activate-virtualenv.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Use the &lt;code&gt;pip&lt;/code&gt; command to install the &lt;a href="/bottle.html"&gt;Bottle&lt;/a&gt; and

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/docs/libraries/python"&gt;Twilio Python&lt;/a&gt; packages

into your virtualenv.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;pip install bottle twilio

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We have installed the required dependencies so now Python code that is run

with the virtualenv activated will be able to use those packages. It's time

to build our Bottle web app and reply to incoming text messages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Coding Our Bottle App&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The Bottle web app will have two routes. One route will allow us to test

that the app is running. The other route will handle and respond to incoming

HTTP POST requests from Twilio. Create a new file named &lt;code&gt;app.py&lt;/code&gt; in your

in the directory where you want to store this Python project.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Write the following code in the new &lt;code&gt;app.py&lt;/code&gt; file. There is also

&lt;a href="https://gist.github.com/makaimc/6ec3b46e40a1020a3ea9c772c601199a"&gt;a GitHub Gist&lt;/a&gt;

with the code that you can copy and paste.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;span class="kn"&gt;from&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nn"&gt;bottle&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="kn"&gt;import&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;post&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;request&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;route&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;run&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="kn"&gt;from&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nn"&gt;twilio&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="kn"&gt;import&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;twiml&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="nd"&gt;@route&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;/&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;def&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nf"&gt;check_app&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;():&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# returns a simple string stating the app is working&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;return&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;It works!&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="nd"&gt;@post&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;/twilio&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;def&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nf"&gt;inbound_sms&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;():&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;twiml_response&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;twiml&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;Response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;()&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# grab message from the request. could also get the &amp;quot;To&amp;quot; and &lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# &amp;quot;From&amp;quot; phone numbers as well from parameters with those names&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;inbound_message&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;request&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;forms&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;get&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;Body&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# we can now use the incoming message text in our Python application&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;inbound_message&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;==&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;Hello&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;twiml_response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;message&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;Hello from Bottle right back at you!&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;else&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;twiml_response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;message&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;Hi! Not quite sure what you meant, but okay.&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# we return back the mimetype because Twilio needs an XML response&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;content_type&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;application/xml&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;return&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nb"&gt;str&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;twiml_response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;__name__&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;==&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;__main__&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;run&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;host&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;127.0.0.1&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;port&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="mi"&gt;5000&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;debug&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="bp"&gt;True&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;reloader&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="bp"&gt;True&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The lines starting with &lt;code&gt;#&lt;/code&gt; are comments that give explanations for what

the code lines below them are doing. Bottle web apps define URL routes with

the &lt;code&gt;@route&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;@post&lt;/code&gt; decorators, depending on the type of HTTP request

the route should handle. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Make sure your virtualenv is still active so that the application can use

the Bottle and Twilio code libraries we installed earlier. Give the

application a try by running it with &lt;code&gt;python app.py&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Open a web browser and go to localhost:5000 (or 127.0.0.1:5000). We should

see "It works!" on the screen.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160605-reply-sms-python-bottle/bottle-app-local.jpg" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Bottle application running locally on Ubuntu."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;However, there is an issue with our web app running on our local development

environment. Twilio cannot send a the HTTP POST request to the web app

server unless a localhost tunnel is created.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Ngrok Localhost Tunneling&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://ngrok.com"&gt;Ngrok&lt;/a&gt; is a localhost tunneling tool that bridges

your local development environment to an external URL.

&lt;a href="https://ngrok.com/download"&gt;Download and install&lt;/a&gt; the Ngrok version that's

appropriate for your operating system.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We can run Ngrok locally and expose our Bottle app that is running on

port 5000. Run this command within the directory where the Ngrok executable is

located.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;./ngrok http 5000

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160605-reply-sms-python-bottle/start-ngrok.jpg" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Ngrok started and running to serve as a localhost tunnel."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Cool, now we can use the Forwarding URL so Twilio can send POST requests

to our application when there is an inbound SMS. Replace the URL in the

text box with your own Forwarding URL, like I did in this screenshot.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160605-reply-sms-python-bottle/access-ngrok.jpg" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Paste the ngrok Forwarding URL into the Twilio webhook configuration text box."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Now we just need a Twilio phone number that will send POST request to our

application when there is an inbound SMS.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Obtain a Phone Number&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our Bottle web app's route can respond to incoming POST requests but we

need to use Twilio to have a phone number that will convert the inbound SMS

data into the POST request. In your web browser go to the

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/try-twilio"&gt;Twilio website and sign up for a free account&lt;/a&gt;.

You can also sign into your existing Twilio account if you already have one.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160605-reply-sms-python-bottle/try-twilio.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Twilio sign up screen."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The Twilio trial account allows you to send and receive text messages to

your own validated phone number. To send and reply to SMS to and from any

phone number then you need to upgrade your account. Trial accounts are

great for initial development before your application goes live.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When you sign up, you receive a free Twilio phone number. We can

configure that phone number to forward the SMS information to our web

application by setting up the response webhook.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Go to the

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/console/phone-numbers"&gt;manage phone numbers screen&lt;/a&gt;

and click on the phone number you want to configure for replying to

text messages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Scroll down and look for the "Messaging" header. Change the

"A Message Comes in" text box to input the ngrok Forwarding URL plus

the "/twilio" route, as shown in the screenshot below.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160605-reply-sms-python-bottle/webhook-ngrok.jpg" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Paste the ngrok Forwarding URL into the Twilio webhook configuration text box."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Click the "Save" button so that our changes take effect.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our application is ready to go - time to give our phone number a try!

Send "Hello" or whatever text you want to your phone number. Here is what

the result looks like on my iPhone.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160605-reply-sms-python-bottle/bottle-success.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Example screenshot of what SMS replies look like on the iPhone."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The concise Bottle web app is a good start to build more complicated

programs such as

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014/11/choose-your-own-adventure-presentations-with-reveal-js-python-and-websockets.html"&gt;Choose Your Own Adventure Presentations&lt;/a&gt;

or

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2016/05/build-sms-slack-bot-python.html"&gt;SMS Slack bots&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;What's next?&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Awesome, our Bottle application now replies to inbound SMS text

messages! &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Questions? Contact me via Twitter

&lt;a href="https://twitter.com/fullstackpython"&gt;@fullstackpython&lt;/a&gt;

or &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/mattmakai"&gt;@mattmakai&lt;/a&gt;. I'm also on GitHub with

the username &lt;a href="https://github.com/makaimc"&gt;makaimc&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Something wrong with this post? Fork

&lt;a href="https://github.com/makaimc/fullstackpython.com/blob/gh-pages/source/content/posts/160605-reply-sms-python-bottle.markdown"&gt;this page's source on GitHub&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</summary></entry><entry><title>How to Build Your First Slack Bot with Python</title><link href="https://www.fullstackpython.com/build-first-slack-bot-python.html" rel="alternate"></link><updated>2016-06-04T00:00:00-04:00</updated><author><name>Matt Makai</name></author><id>tag:www.fullstackpython.com,2016-06-04:build-first-slack-bot-python.html</id><summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="/bots.html"&gt;Bots&lt;/a&gt; are a useful way to interact with chat services such as

&lt;a href="https://slack.com/"&gt;Slack&lt;/a&gt;. If you have never built a bot before, this

post provides an easy starter tutorial for combining the

&lt;a href="https://api.slack.com/"&gt;Slack API&lt;/a&gt; with Python to create your first bot.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We will walk through setting up your development environment, obtaining a

Slack API bot token and coding our simple bot in Python.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Tools We Need&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our bot, which we will name "StarterBot", requires Python and the Slack API.

To run our Python code we need:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Either &lt;a href="/python-2-or-3.html"&gt;Python 2 or 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/"&gt;pip&lt;/a&gt; and

&lt;a href="https://virtualenv.pypa.io/en/stable/"&gt;virtualenv&lt;/a&gt; to handle Python

&lt;a href="/application-dependencies.html"&gt;application dependencies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://slack.com/"&gt;Free Slack account&lt;/a&gt; with a team on which you have

API access or sign up for the

&lt;a href="http://dev4slack.xoxco.com/"&gt;Slack Developer Hangout team&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Official Python

&lt;a href="https://github.com/slackhq/python-slackclient"&gt;slackclient&lt;/a&gt; code

library built by the Slack team&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://api.slack.com/tokens"&gt;Slack API testing token&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is also useful to have the &lt;a href="https://api.slack.com/"&gt;Slack API docs&lt;/a&gt; handy

while you're building this tutorial.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;All the code for this tutorial is available open source under the MIT license

in the &lt;a href="https://github.com/makaimc/slack-starterbot"&gt;slack-starterbot&lt;/a&gt; public

repository.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Establishing Our Environment&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We now know what tools we need for our project so let's get our development

environment set up. Go to the terminal (or Command Prompt on Windows) and

change into the directory where you want to store this project. Within

that directory, create a new virtualenv to isolate our application

dependencies from other Python projects.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;virtualenv starterbot

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Activate the virtualenv:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;source starterbot/bin/activate

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Your prompt should now look like the one in this screenshot.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160604-simple-python-slack-bot/virtualenv-activate.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Command prompt with starterbot's virtualenv activated."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The official slackclient API helper library built by Slack can send and

receive messages from a Slack channel. Install the slackclient library with

the &lt;code&gt;pip&lt;/code&gt; command:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;pip install slackclient

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When &lt;code&gt;pip&lt;/code&gt; is finished you should see output like this and you'll be

back at the prompt.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160604-simple-python-slack-bot/pip-install-slackclient.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Output from using the pip install slackclient command with a virtualenv activated."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We also need to obtain an access token for our Slack team so our bot can

use it to connect to the Slack API.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Slack Real Time Messaging (RTM) API&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Slack grants programmatic access to their messaging channels via a

&lt;a href="/application-programming-interfaces.html"&gt;web API&lt;/a&gt;. Go to the

&lt;a href="https://api.slack.com/"&gt;Slack web API page&lt;/a&gt; and sign up to create your own

Slack team. You can also sign into an existing account where you have

administrative privileges.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160604-simple-python-slack-bot/sign-in-slack.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Use the sign in button on the top right corner of the Slack API page."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After you have signed in go to the

&lt;a href="https://api.slack.com/bot-users"&gt;Bot Users page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160604-simple-python-slack-bot/custom-bot-users.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Custom bot users webpage."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Name your bot "starterbot" then click the “Add bot integration” button.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160604-simple-python-slack-bot/starterbot.jpg" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Add a bot integration named starterbot."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The page will reload and you will see a newly-generated access token. You

can also change the logo to a custom design. For example, I gave this bot

the Full Stack Python logo.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160604-simple-python-slack-bot/slack-token.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Copy and paste the access token for your new Slack bot."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Click the "Save Integration" button at the bottom of the page. Your bot is

now ready to connect to Slack's API.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A common practice for Python developers is to export secret tokens as

environment variables. Export the Slack token with the name

&lt;code&gt;SLACK_BOT_TOKEN&lt;/code&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;export SLACK_BOT_TOKEN=&amp;#39;your slack token pasted here&amp;#39;

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Nice, now we are authorized to use the Slack API as a bot.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There is one more piece of information we need to build our bot: our bot's

ID. Next we will write a short script to obtain that ID from the Slack API.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Obtaining Our Bot’s ID&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;finally&lt;/em&gt; time to write some Python code! We'll get warmed up by coding

a short Python script to obtain StarterBot's ID. The ID varies based on the

Slack team. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We need the ID because it allows our application to determine if messages

parsed from the Slack RTM are directed at StarterBot. Our script also

tests that our &lt;code&gt;SLACK_BOT_TOKEN&lt;/code&gt; environment variable is properly set. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Create a new file named &lt;code&gt;print_bot_id.py&lt;/code&gt; and fill it with the following

code.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;span class="kn"&gt;import&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nn"&gt;os&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="kn"&gt;from&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nn"&gt;slackclient&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="kn"&gt;import&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;SlackClient&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;BOT_NAME&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;starterbot&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;slack_client&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;SlackClient&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;os&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;environ&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;get&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;SLACK_BOT_TOKEN&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;))&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;__name__&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;==&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;__main__&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;api_call&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;slack_client&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;api_call&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;users.list&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;api_call&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;get&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;ok&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;):&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# retrieve all users so we can find our bot&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;users&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;api_call&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;get&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;members&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;for&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;user&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="ow"&gt;in&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;users&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;name&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="ow"&gt;in&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;user&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="ow"&gt;and&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;user&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;get&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;name&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;==&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;BOT_NAME&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;print&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;Bot ID for &amp;#39;&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;+&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;user&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;name&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;]&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;+&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;#39; is &amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;+&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;user&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;get&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;id&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;))&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;else&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;print&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;could not find bot user with the name &amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;+&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;BOT_NAME&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our code imports the SlackClient and instantiates it with our

&lt;code&gt;SLACK_BOT_TOKEN&lt;/code&gt;, which we set as an environment variable. When the

script is executed by the &lt;code&gt;python&lt;/code&gt; command we call the Slack API to list

all Slack users and get the ID for the one that matches the name "starterbot".&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We only need to run this script once to obtain our bot’s ID.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;python print_bot_id.py

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The script prints a single line of output when it is run that provides

us with our bot's ID.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160604-simple-python-slack-bot/printed-bot-id.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Use the Python script to print the Slack bot's ID in your Slack team."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Copy the unique ID that your script prints out. Export the ID as an

environment variable named &lt;code&gt;BOT_ID&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;(starterbot)$ export BOT_ID=&amp;#39;bot id returned by script&amp;#39;

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The script only needs to be run once to get the bot ID. We can now use

that ID in our Python application that will run StarterBot.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Coding Our StarterBot&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We've got everything we need to write the StarterBot code. Create a new file

named &lt;code&gt;starterbot.py&lt;/code&gt; and include the following code in it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;span class="kn"&gt;import&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nn"&gt;os&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="kn"&gt;import&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nn"&gt;time&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="kn"&gt;from&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nn"&gt;slackclient&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="kn"&gt;import&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;SlackClient&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;os&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;SlackClient&lt;/code&gt; imports will look familiar because we used them

in the &lt;code&gt;print_bot_id.py&lt;/code&gt; program.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With our dependencies imported we can use them to obtain the environment

variable values and then instantiate the Slack client.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;span class="cp"&gt;# starterbot&amp;#39;s ID as an environment variable&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;BOT_ID&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;os&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;environ&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;get&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;BOT_ID&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="cp"&gt;# constants&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;AT_BOT&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;lt;@&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;+&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;BOT_ID&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;+&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;:&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;EXAMPLE_COMMAND&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;do&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="cp"&gt;# instantiate Slack &amp;amp; Twilio clients&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;slack_client&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;SlackClient&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;os&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;environ&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;get&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="err"&gt;&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;SLACK_BOT_TOKEN&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="err"&gt;&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;))&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The code instantiates the &lt;code&gt;SlackClient&lt;/code&gt; client with our &lt;code&gt;SLACK_BOT_TOKEN&lt;/code&gt;

exported as an environment variable. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;if __name__ == &amp;quot;__main__&amp;quot;:

READ_WEBSOCKET_DELAY = 1 # 1 second delay between reading from firehose

if slack_client.rtm_connect():

print(&amp;quot;StarterBot connected and running!&amp;quot;)

while True:

command, channel = parse_slack_output(slack_client.rtm_read())

if command and channel:

handle_command(command, channel)

time.sleep(READ_WEBSOCKET_DELAY)

else:

print(&amp;quot;Connection failed. Invalid Slack token or bot ID?&amp;quot;)

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The Slack client connects to the Slack RTM API WebSocket then constantly

loops while parsing messages from the firehose. If any of those messages are

directed at StarterBot, a function named &lt;code&gt;handle_command&lt;/code&gt; determines what

to do.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Next add two new functions to parse Slack output and handle commands.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;span class="nx"&gt;def&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;handle_command&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="nx"&gt;command&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;channel&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="s2"&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="s2"&gt; Receives commands directed at the bot and determines if they&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="s2"&gt; are valid commands. If so, then acts on the commands. If not,&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="s2"&gt; returns back what it needs for clarification.&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="s2"&gt; &amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="nx"&gt;response&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s2"&gt;&amp;quot;Not sure what you mean. Use the *&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;+&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;EXAMPLE_COMMAND&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;+&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;\&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="s2"&gt;&amp;quot;* command with numbers, delimited by spaces.&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;command&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="nx"&gt;startswith&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="nx"&gt;EXAMPLE_COMMAND&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="nx"&gt;response&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s2"&gt;&amp;quot;Sure...write some more code then I can do that!&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="nx"&gt;slack_client&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="nx"&gt;api_call&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s2"&gt;&amp;quot;chat.postMessage&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;channel&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="nx"&gt;channel&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="nx"&gt;text&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="nx"&gt;response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;as_user&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="nx"&gt;True&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="nx"&gt;def&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;parse_slack_output&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="nx"&gt;slack_rtm_output&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="s2"&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="s2"&gt; The Slack Real Time Messaging API is an events firehose.&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="s2"&gt; this parsing function returns None unless a message is&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="s2"&gt; directed at the Bot, based on its ID.&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="s2"&gt; &amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="nx"&gt;output_list&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;slack_rtm_output&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;output_list&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;and&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;len&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="nx"&gt;output_list&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="mi"&gt;0&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;for&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;output&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="k"&gt;in&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;output_list&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;output&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;and&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s1"&gt;&amp;#39;text&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="k"&gt;in&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;output&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;and&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;AT_BOT&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="k"&gt;in&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;output&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="cp"&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s1"&gt;&amp;#39;text&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="cp"&gt;]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="err"&gt;#&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="k"&gt;return&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;text&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;after&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;the&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="err"&gt;@&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;mention&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;whitespace&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;removed&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;return&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;output&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="cp"&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s1"&gt;&amp;#39;text&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="cp"&gt;]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="nx"&gt;split&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="nx"&gt;AT_BOT&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="cp"&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="mi"&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="cp"&gt;]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="nx"&gt;strip&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;().&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="nx"&gt;lower&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(),&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;\&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="nx"&gt;output&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="cp"&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s1"&gt;&amp;#39;channel&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="cp"&gt;]&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;return&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;None&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nx"&gt;None&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;parse_slack_output&lt;/code&gt; function takes messages from Slack and determines

if they are directed at our StarterBot. Messages that start with a direct

command to our bot ID are then handled by our code - which is currently

just posts a message back in the Slack channel telling the user to write

some more Python code!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here is how the entire program should look when it's all put together

(you can also

&lt;a href="https://github.com/makaimc/slack-starterbot/blob/master/starterbot.py"&gt;view the file in GitHub&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;span class="kn"&gt;import&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nn"&gt;os&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="kn"&gt;import&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nn"&gt;time&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="kn"&gt;from&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nn"&gt;slackclient&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="kn"&gt;import&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;SlackClient&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# starterbot&amp;#39;s ID as an environment variable&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;BOT_ID&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;os&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;environ&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;get&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;BOT_ID&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# constants&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;AT_BOT&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;lt;@&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;+&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;BOT_ID&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;+&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;:&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;EXAMPLE_COMMAND&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;do&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# instantiate Slack &amp;amp; Twilio clients&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;slack_client&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;SlackClient&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;os&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;environ&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;get&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;SLACK_BOT_TOKEN&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;))&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;def&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nf"&gt;handle_command&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;command&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;channel&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;):&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="sd"&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="sd"&gt; Receives commands directed at the bot and determines if they&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="sd"&gt; are valid commands. If so, then acts on the commands. If not,&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="sd"&gt; returns back what it needs for clarification.&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="sd"&gt; &amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;response&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;Not sure what you mean. Use the *&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;+&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;EXAMPLE_COMMAND&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;+&lt;/span&gt; \

&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;* command with numbers, delimited by spaces.&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;command&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;startswith&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;EXAMPLE_COMMAND&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;):&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;response&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;Sure...write some more code then I can do that!&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;slack_client&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;api_call&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;chat.postMessage&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;channel&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;channel&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;text&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;as_user&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="bp"&gt;True&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;def&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nf"&gt;parse_slack_output&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;slack_rtm_output&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;):&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="sd"&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="sd"&gt; The Slack Real Time Messaging API is an events firehose.&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="sd"&gt; this parsing function returns None unless a message is&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="sd"&gt; directed at the Bot, based on its ID.&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="sd"&gt; &amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;output_list&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;slack_rtm_output&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;output_list&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="ow"&gt;and&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nb"&gt;len&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;output_list&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="mi"&gt;0&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;for&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;output&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="ow"&gt;in&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;output_list&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;output&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="ow"&gt;and&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;text&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="ow"&gt;in&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;output&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="ow"&gt;and&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;AT_BOT&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="ow"&gt;in&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;output&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;text&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;]:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# return text after the @ mention, whitespace removed&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;return&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;output&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;text&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;split&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;AT_BOT&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="mi"&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;strip&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;()&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;lower&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(),&lt;/span&gt; \

&lt;span class="n"&gt;output&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;#39;channel&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;]&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;return&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="bp"&gt;None&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="bp"&gt;None&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;__name__&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;==&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;__main__&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;READ_WEBSOCKET_DELAY&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="mi"&gt;1&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="c"&gt;# 1 second delay between reading from firehose&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;slack_client&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;rtm_connect&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;():&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;print&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;StarterBot connected and running!&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;while&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="bp"&gt;True&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;command&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;channel&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;parse_slack_output&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;slack_client&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;rtm_read&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;())&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;command&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="ow"&gt;and&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;channel&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;handle_command&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;command&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;channel&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;time&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;sleep&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;READ_WEBSOCKET_DELAY&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;else&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;print&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;Connection failed. Invalid Slack token or bot ID?&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Now that all of our code is in place we can run our StarterBot on the

command line with the &lt;code&gt;python starterbot.py&lt;/code&gt; command.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160604-simple-python-slack-bot/starterbot-running.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Console output when the StarterBot is running and connected to the API."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In Slack, create a new channel and invite StarterBot or invite it to an

existing channel.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160604-simple-python-slack-bot/create-channel.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="In the Slack user interface create a new channel and invite StarterBot."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Now start giving StarterBot commands in your channel.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160604-simple-python-slack-bot/working-starterbot.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded" alt="Give StarterBot commands in your Slack channel."&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Wrapping Up&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Alright, now you've got a simple StarterBot with a bunch of places in the

code you can add whatever features you want to build. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There is a whole lot more that could be done using the Slack RTM API and Python.

Check out these posts to learn what you could do:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Attach a persistent &lt;a href="/databases.html"&gt;relational database&lt;/a&gt; or

&lt;a href="/no-sql-datastore.html"&gt;NoSQL back-end&lt;/a&gt; such as

&lt;a href="/postgresql.html"&gt;PostgreSQL&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="/mysql.html"&gt;MySQL&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href="/sqlite.html"&gt;SQLite&lt;/a&gt;

to save and retrieve user data&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Add another channel to interact with the bot

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2016/05/build-sms-slack-bot-python.html"&gt;via SMS&lt;/a&gt;

or

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2016/05/add-phone-calling-slack-python.html"&gt;phone calls&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="/api-integration.html"&gt;Integrate other web APIs&lt;/a&gt; such as

&lt;a href="https://developer.github.com/v3/"&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt;,

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/docs"&gt;Twilio&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href="https://docs.api.ai/"&gt;api.ai&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Questions? Contact me via Twitter

&lt;a href="https://twitter.com/fullstackpython"&gt;@fullstackpython&lt;/a&gt;

or &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/mattmakai"&gt;@mattmakai&lt;/a&gt;. I'm also on GitHub with

the username &lt;a href="https://github.com/makaimc"&gt;makaimc&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Something wrong with this post? Fork

&lt;a href="https://github.com/makaimc/fullstackpython.com/blob/gh-pages/source/content/posts/160604-build-first-slack-bot-python.markdown"&gt;this page's source on GitHub&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</summary></entry><entry><title>Responding to SMS Text Messages with Python &amp; Flask</title><link href="https://www.fullstackpython.com/respond-sms-text-messages-python-flask.html" rel="alternate"></link><updated>2016-05-30T00:00:00-04:00</updated><author><name>Matt Makai</name></author><id>tag:www.fullstackpython.com,2016-05-30:respond-sms-text-messages-python-flask.html</id><summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Short Message Service (SMS) text messages are

&lt;a href="/blog/send-sms-text-messages-python.html"&gt;easy to send from Python applications&lt;/a&gt;

with a

&lt;a href="/application-programming-interfaces.html"&gt;web application programming interface (API)&lt;/a&gt;.

Flask applications can also receive incoming text messages and respond

back to the sender with just a few lines of Python code.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Tools We Need&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This tutorial is fine for both Python 2 and 3. Make sure you have one of

those two versions installed on your system.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Either &lt;a href="/python-2-or-3.html"&gt;Python 2 or 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/"&gt;pip&lt;/a&gt; and

&lt;a href="https://virtualenv.pypa.io/en/latest/"&gt;virtualenv&lt;/a&gt; to handle

&lt;a href="/application-dependencies.html"&gt;application dependencies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href="/flask.html"&gt;Flask&lt;/a&gt; micro web framework&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;A free &lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/try-twilio"&gt;Twilio account&lt;/a&gt; to use their

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/rest/sending-messages"&gt;SMS web API&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Open source

&lt;a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/twilio"&gt;Twilio Python helper library&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://ngrok.com/"&gt;Ngrok&lt;/a&gt; for localhost tunneling to our Flask

application while it's running on our local development environment&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you need assistance getting pip and virtualenv installed, take a look at

the first few steps in the

&lt;a href="/blog/python-3-flask-green-unicorn-ubuntu-1604-xenial-xerus.html"&gt;how to set up Python 3, Flask and Green Unicorn on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS&lt;/a&gt;

guide, which shows how to install system packages for those tools.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Installing Our Dependencies&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our code will use a helper library to make it easier to respond to text

messages from Python. The helper library dependency along with the Flask

code library can be installed from &lt;a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi"&gt;PyPI&lt;/a&gt; into

a virtualenv. In your terminal use the following command to generate a new

virtualenv. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;virtualenv respondsms

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Activate the virtualenv.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;source respondsms/bin/activate

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The command prompt will change after we properly activate the virtualenv

to something like this:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160530-respond-sms-python-flask/activate-virtualenv.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Install Flask and the Twilio Python helper library into the virtualenv with

the &lt;code&gt;pip&lt;/code&gt; command. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;pip install flask twilio

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The dependencies are installed so that we can use it with our Python code.

Now we can write our Python application.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Building Our Flask Web App&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our Flask application will have two routes: one to make sure the web app

is running and another that handles incoming HTTP POST requests. Create

a new file named &lt;code&gt;app.py&lt;/code&gt; in your home directory or where you choose to

store your Python project files.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Within &lt;code&gt;app.py&lt;/code&gt; write the following code. You can also see

&lt;a href="https://gist.github.com/makaimc/8ab434ccb604d3ba5bde817a183e0bde"&gt;this code in a GitHub Gist&lt;/a&gt;

if that's easier to copy and paste.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;span class="kn"&gt;from&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nn"&gt;flask&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="kn"&gt;import&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;Flask&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;Response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;request&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="kn"&gt;from&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nn"&gt;twilio&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="kn"&gt;import&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;twiml&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;app&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;Flask&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;__name__&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="nd"&gt;@app.route&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;/&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;def&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nf"&gt;check_app&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;():&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# returns a simple string stating the app is working&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;return&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;Response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;It works!&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;),&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="mi"&gt;200&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="nd"&gt;@app.route&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;/twilio&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;methods&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;POST&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;])&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;def&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="nf"&gt;inbound_sms&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;():&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;response&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;twiml&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;Response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;()&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# we get the SMS message from the request. we could also get the &lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# &amp;quot;To&amp;quot; and the &amp;quot;From&amp;quot; phone number as well&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;inbound_message&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;request&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;form&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;get&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;Body&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# we can now use the incoming message text in our Python application&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;inbound_message&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;==&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;Hello&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;message&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;Hello back to you!&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;else&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;message&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;Hi! Not quite sure what you meant, but okay.&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="c"&gt;# we return back the mimetype because Twilio needs an XML response&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;return&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;Response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="nb"&gt;str&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;response&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;),&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;mimetype&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;application/xml&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;),&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="mi"&gt;200&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;__name__&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="o"&gt;==&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="s"&gt;&amp;quot;__main__&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;span class="n"&gt;app&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;run&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="n"&gt;debug&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="bp"&gt;True&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The inline comments on the lines starting with &lt;code&gt;#&lt;/code&gt; explain what the lines

below them do. Flask applications define URL routes with the &lt;code&gt;@app.route&lt;/code&gt;

decorator. Our application needs two routes therefore we have two of those

decorators defined.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Give the application a try by running it with &lt;code&gt;python app.py&lt;/code&gt;. If you have

trouble running the program, make sure your virtualenv is still active so

that the application can use the Flask and Twilio code libraries we installed

earlier.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Open a web browser and go to localhost:5000 (or 127.0.0.1:5000). We should

see "It works!" on the screen.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160530-respond-sms-python-flask/app-local.jpg" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There is one problem with our application running on our local development

environment: there's no way for our server to receive HTTP POST requests

unless we use a localhost tunnel.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Localhost Tunneling with Ngrok&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://ngrok.com"&gt;Ngrok&lt;/a&gt; provides a localhost tunnel so that outside

services can connect to a server running in your local development

environment. Download and install Ngrok.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We can now run Ngrok locally and connect our Flask app running on port 5000.

Within the directory where you extracted Ngrok, run this command.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight"&gt;&lt;pre&gt;./ngrok http 5000

&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160530-respond-sms-python-flask/start-ngrok.jpg" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Awesome, now we can use that Ngrok Forwarding URL to access our application

from any machine that has an internet connection. Replace the URL in the

web browser with your own Forwarding URL, like I did in this screenshot.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160530-respond-sms-python-flask/access-ngrok.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We just need a phone number that'll hit our application with a POST request

to respond to text messages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Obtaining Our Phone Number&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We can use our Flask application's route to respond to incoming web API

requests based on incoming SMS messages to a Twilio phone number. Go to the

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/try-twilio"&gt;Twilio website and sign up for a free trial account&lt;/a&gt;

to use their API. If you already have a Twilio account then sign into your

existing account.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160530-respond-sms-python-flask/try-twilio.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The Twilio trial account allows you to send and receive text messages to

your own validated phone number. To send and respond to SMS to and from any

phone number then you need to upgrade your account. Trial accounts are

great for initial development before your application goes live.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When you sign up, you receive a free Twilio phone number. We can

configure that phone number to forward the SMS information to our web

application by setting up the response webhook.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Go to the

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/console/phone-numbers"&gt;manage phone numbers screen&lt;/a&gt;

and click on the phone number you want to configure for responding to

inbound text messages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Scroll down to near the bottom of the page and look for the "Messaging"

header. Modify the "A Message Comes in" text box so that it has your

ngrok Forwarding URL plus the "/twilio" route, as shown in this screenshot.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160530-respond-sms-python-flask/number-configuration.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Now press the red "Save" button at the bottom to make our changes take

effect.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our application is ready to go - time to give our phone number a try!

Send "Hello" or whatever text you want to your phone number. Here is what

the result looks like on my iPhone.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/source/static/img/160530-respond-sms-python-flask/success.jpg" width="100%" class="technical-diagram img-rounded"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This simple Flask application is a good start to build more complicated

responses such as

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014/06/using-natural-language-processing-for-better-sms-interfaces-using-twilio-and-pythons-textblob.html"&gt;adding natural language processing&lt;/a&gt;,

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2016/05/build-sms-slack-bot-python.html"&gt;building SMS Slack bots&lt;/a&gt;

or

&lt;a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2015/08/romram-hacking-building-an-sms-powered-game-genie-with-lua-and-python.html"&gt;coding SMS-powered NES Game Genies&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;What's next?&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Sweet, now our Flask web app automatically responds to incoming SMS text

messages! It's pretty crazy to think that entire businesses such as

&lt;a href="http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/07/superphone/"&gt;SuperPhone&lt;/a&gt; and

&lt;a href="https://www.remind.com/"&gt;Remind&lt;/a&gt; are built off code that started out very

similar to the code we just wrote.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Questions? Contact me via Twitter

&lt;a href="https://twitter.com/fullstackpython"&gt;@fullstackpython&lt;/a&gt;

or &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/mattmakai"&gt;@mattmakai&lt;/a&gt;. I'm also on GitHub with

the username &lt;a href="https://github.com/makaimc"&gt;makaimc&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Something wrong with this post? Fork

&lt;a href="https://github.com/makaimc/fullstackpython.com/blob/gh-pages/source/content/posts/160530-respond-sms-text-messages-python-flask.markdown"&gt;this page's source on GitHub&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</summary></entry><entry><title>How to Install and Use MySQL on Ubuntu 16.04</title><link href="https://www.fullstackpython.com/install-mysql-ubuntu-1604.html" rel="alternate"></link><updated>2016-05-28T00:00:00-04:00</updated><author><name>Matt Makai</name></author><id>tag:www.fullstackpython.com,2016-05-28:install-mysql-ubuntu-1604.html</id><summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="/mysql.html"&gt;MySQL&lt;/a&gt; is a common open source