Sending SMS messages via a URL - http2sms

Objective

There are different methods for sending SMS messages. One of them involves using the Wget tool, directly via your web browser’s URL bar.

Find out how to send SMS messages with the Wget tool.

Requirements

• An SMS user created via the OVHcloud Control Panel, or directly via the APIs. To do this, please refer to the following guide: Everything you need to know about SMS users
• An OVHcloud SMS account with SMS credits.
• An active SMS sender. For more information, refer to this guide.

Instructions

SMS messages are sent via a HTTPS request with mandatory fields (and optional fields, if applicable) to the following address: https://www.ovh.co.uk/cgi-bin/sms/http2sms.cgi?.

Step 1: Include the mandatory fields.

Your URL must be as follows:

https://www.ovh.com/cgi-bin/sms/http2sms.cgi?&account=XXXXXXX&login=XXXXXXX&password=XXXXXXX&from=XXXXXXX&to=XXXXXXX&message=XXXXXXX

The following settings must be separated by ampersands (&). Replace the Xs with the information below:

By default, the message is sent immediately.

Your browser will display the following information:

• the send status
• the number of credits remaining on the SMS account
• the ID(s) of the SMS messages sent

For example:

OK
85.95
123456789

Find more details on analysing sent messages in step 3 of this guide.

Special case: sending an SMS from a short-number sender that allows replies

To send an SMS from a short-number sender that allows the recipient to reply, you must leave the from parameter empty and add the senderForResponse=1 field.

Your URL will then be as follows (where the Xs must be replaced with the values described in the table above):

https://www.ovh.com/cgi-bin/sms/http2sms.cgi?&account=XXXXXXX&login=XXXXXXX&password=XXXXXXX&from=&senderForResponse=1&to=XXXXXXX&message=XXXXXXX

Step 2: Add optional fields.

You can add extra fields in the subject, such as:

https://www.ovh.com/cgi-bin/sms/http2sms.cgi?&account=XXXXXXX&login=XXXXXXX&password=XXXXXXX&from=XXXXXXX&to=XXXXXXX1,XXXXXXX2&message=XXXXXXX&deferred=XXXXXXX&class=X&smsCoding=X&noStop=X

Replace the Xs with the information below:

Commercial SMS size

A commercial SMS message must include the STOP clause. This contains 11 characters and is automatically deducted from the 160 base characters of the first SMS. The table below therefore indicates the maximum number of characters allowed for commercial SMS messages.

Example: in 7bit encoding, if your message is longer than 149 characters, it will be sent as 2 SMS messages and will therefore cost 2 credits.

Step 3: Analyse sent messages.

Once you have sent an SMS message, an API return code will show you whether the message has been sent successfully, or failed. A code higher than 100 and lower than 200 indicates that the message has been sent.

Here is a list of API return codes.

• 100 or 101: request processed.
• 201: a setting is missing (e.g. Missing login, Missing password).
• 202: a setting is incorrect (e.g. Invalid tag: is too long, Invalid deferred time).
• 401: no authorised IP. To managed authorised IPs, you can apply restrictions via the OVHcloud Control Panel.

When a failure occurs, the cause is included:

• in the message field for .json or .xml
• on the second line for .html and text/plain

XML

• If sent successfully:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><response><status>100</status><creditLeft>1987</creditLeft><smsIds><smsId>10867690</smsId></smsIds></response>

• If sending failed:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><response><status>201</status><message>Missing message. For more information: https://help.ovhcloud.com/csm/en-gb-sms-sending-via-url-http2sms?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0039184</message></response>

JSON

• If sent successfully:

{"status":100,"creditLeft":"1987","SmsIds":["10867690"]}

• If sending failed:

{"status":201,"message":"Missing message. For more information: https://help.ovhcloud.com/csm/en-gb-sms-sending-via-url-http2sms?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0039184"}

HTML

• If sent successfully:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset="utf-8"" >
<title>HTTP2SMS</title>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
OK<br/>
1987<br/>
10867690<br/>
</BODY>
</HTML>

• If sending failed:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset="utf-8"" >
<title>HTTP2SMS</title>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
KO<br/>Missing message. For more information: https://help.ovhcloud.com/csm/en-gb-sms-sending-via-url-http2sms?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0039184<br/>
</BODY>
</HTML>

Text/plain

• If sent successfully:

OK
1987
10867690

• If sending failed:

KO
Missing message. For more information: https://help.ovhcloud.com/csm/en-gb-sms-sending-via-url-http2sms?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0039184

Appendix

The two tables below list the authorised characters for 7bit encoding. The characters in the "Extensions" table count as double.

The maximum size of an SMS message is 160 characters in 7bit encoding (GSM 03.38 standard).

If you use characters that do not appear in these tables, the encoding will switch to Unicode, reducing the maximum size of an SMS message to 70 characters.

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