Sending a Message

Sending a Message

Sending your first message to the SMSC is very easy. You can interact with the SMSC HTTP API by sending it an HTTP POST or GET request.

API Endpoint

The endpoint for the API is:

https://smsc.txtnation.com:8093/sms/send_sms.php

The HTTP GET or POST variables you need to send us are as follows:

Variable Type Contents

dst

String

The MSISDN to which you are sending the message. This should be in full international format without leading zeros or + sign.

msg

String

The message that you want to send as the contents of the SMS.

src

String

The sender ID for the message you are sending. Your SMS will appear to have been sent from this number on the handset.

dr

Integer

The delivery notification flag should be set to 1 if you want to receive delivery notifications for the sent message or 0 otherwise. See Receiving a Delivery Report for more details.

type

Integer

The type of message that is being sent:

  • 0 — Normal SMS (Default)
  • u — Unicode
  • v — vCard
  • f — Flash
  • b — Binary

user

String

The username that you decided on during sign up to the SMSC.

password

String

The password that you choose during sign up to the SMSC.

Server Replies

When you have sent the message via HTTP the receiving server will reply with an acknowledgement of the request in the same HTTP session. If the operation was a success, you will receive a message like the following:

Operation success: 6019287381992219

The number returned here should be recorded to match up any subsequent delivery reports.

If the operation was not successful we will reply with an error message detailing why the SMS could not be sent. For example, Operation fail: Route Error would be returned if the message could not be routed.

Request Throttling

By default, requests from each account are throttled on a requests-per-second basis. If you exceed this limit at any time you will receive an UNDELIVERABLE error, followed by a numeric code that indicates which throttle has been exceeded.

Error code Description

60

Charging failure. Make sure that you have enough credits to send all the messages!

88

The upstream SMPP throttle was exceeded.

288

The internal throttle limit was exceeded.

0

Unspecified throttling error.

Retrying Messages

When sending messages to our SMSC API gateway, you may experience unsuccessful submissions with statuses according to the above or general service or platform errors. These should be logged and, where possible, associated with the correct outbound MT SMS message.

In certain cases you may be able to retry the message but this will often depend on the agreements with the operators in a given country.

Next: Receiving a Delivery Report

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