How to get daily weather notification on mobile using Node.js and Twilio API ?
Last Updated :
11 May, 2020
Looking for weather information daily is a trivial task. As programmers, we can make this task easier by creating a notification service. We will use the
Twilio SMS API for sending SMS and Node.js for writing the service which runs every day at a particular time.
Getting Twilio Credentials: To use Twilio APIs, we need to register our app and get the API keys from Twilio's console. We need to get
ACCOUNT SID
,
AUTH TOKEN
, and
TRIAL NUMBER
. You can get all these credentials from
here.
Twilio Console
Save these credentials to
.env
file in your project's root directory along with your phone number. Since its a security best practice to save every credential in a separate file.
javascript
ACC_SID = 'your-account-sid'
AUTH_TOKEN = 'your-auth-token'
TO = 'your-number-with-country-code'
FROM = 'twilio-trial-number'
Sending SMS: In order to send SMS, we can use Twilio's library for Node.js. Install the library using the following command:
npm install twilio
Now let's test our credentials by sending a message. Add the following code to the
index.js
file.
javascript
// Getting Data from .env file
const accountSid = process.env.ACC_SID;
const authToken = process.env.AUTH_TOKEN;
const twilio = require("twilio");
const client = new twilio(accountSid, authToken);
client.messages
.create({
body: "Hello from GeeksForGeeks!",
to: process.env.TO,
from: process.env.FROM
})
.then(message => console.log(message.sid));
If all goes good then you will receive an SMS from Twilio with the text "Hello from GeeksForGeeks!".
Getting the weather information: To get the latest weather information, we will use
Openweathermap API which is freely available.
To use the API signup on the website and go to the dashboard to generate the API key as follows:
Openweather map.org Dashboard
We will use the Node.js's
request
library to fetch the data from the API. Install the dependency using the following command:
npm install request
And then add the following code snippet to the
index.js
file.
javascript
// Import request library
const request = require("request");
function getdata() {
request(
"http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=delhi&appid=<your-api-key>&units=metric",
{ json: true },
(err, res, body) => {
if (err) {
return console.log(err);
}
// Printing fetched data
console.log(body);
});
}
// Calling function
getData();
Now, create a function to send notification data and add the code for sending SMS like below:
javascript
// Send message
function sendNotification(msg) {
client.messages
.create({
body: msg,
to: process.env.TO,
from: process.env.FROM
})
.then(message => console.log(message.sid));
}
Now we have to create a message from the data received from the weather API. Replace the
getData(
) function with the following code:
javascript
function getdata(){
request(
"http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=delhi&appid=<your-api-key>&units=metric",
{ json: true },
(err, res, body) => {
if (err) {
return console.log(err);
}
// Create a message
let msg = `\nToday's Weather : \n${body.weather[0].main}, ${body.main.temp}°C\nHumidity : ${body.main.humidity}%
`;
// Calling Send Message function
sendNotification(msg);
});
}
Now, to send the message every day, we have to set up a cronjob using the
node-cron
library.
npm install node-cron
Add the cronjob to call getData() method every day at 8:00 AM:
javascript
// Importing library
const twilio = require("node-cron");
// Cronjob runs everyday at 8:00 AM
cron.schedule("0 8 * * *", () => {
// Calling getData method which
// calls the send message method
getData();
});
If everything goes fine then you will receive an SMS displaying the weather information.
Output: