How to Code PHP for Twilio to forward SMS to Email

Coding newby here.

I am trying to write some PHP code to enable SMS forwarding to email with a Twilio phone number. Unfortunately, I haven’t had any success in doing so.

I saw some tutorials using SendGrid, but I would rather use my own PHP code on my web server.

Can anyone point me to a good source or if possible, provide step by step instructions?

Thank you

Answer

Twilio developer evangelist here.

There is a “forward SMS to email” quick deploy here where you don’t need a server–Twilio will host it for you!

This is how you could do it with PHP:

<?php 
/** 
* This section ensures that Twilio gets a response. 
*/ 
header('Content-type: text/xml');
echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>';
echo '<Response></Response>'; //Place the desired response (if any) here

/** 
* This section actually sends the email. 
*/ 

/* Your email address */
$to = "[e-mail]";
$subject = "Message from {$_REQUEST['From']} at {$_REQUEST['To']}"; 
$message = "You have received a message from {$_REQUEST['From']}. Body: {$_REQUEST['Body']}"; 
$headers = "From: [e-mail]"; // Who should it come from?

mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers); 

To make that code above work,

1. Modify the code below to update the From and To email addresses.
2. Publish that file to a Twilio-accessible URL on your web server.
3. Update your Twilio Phone Number’s webhook with your application’s URL.

If you’re a Node.js person, here is a tutorial that uses Twilio Functions, Twilio’s serverless environment for hosting web (Node) apps.

Let me know if this helps at all!