Advanced Call Forwarding with Python, Flask, and Twilio

Learn how to use Twilio to forward a series of phone calls to your state senators.

Local Development

This project is built using the Flask web framework, and runs on Python 2.7+ and Python 3.4+

To run the app locally, follow these steps:

1. Clone this repository and cd into it.

2. Create a new virtual environment with virtualenv:

   virtualenv venv \
   source venv/bin/activate

   This application is compatible with Python versions 2.7 and 3.5, so feel free to use whichever installation you prefer in your environment.

3. Install the requirements:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Run the migrations:

   python manage.py db upgrade
   

5. Seed the database with data:

   python manage.py dbseed
   

   This will load senators.json and US zip codes into your SQLite database. Please note: our senators dataset is likely outdated, and we've mapped senators to placeholder phone numbers that are set up with Twilio to read a message and hang up.

6. Expose your application to the internet using ngrok. In a separate terminal session, start ngrok with:

   ngrok http 5000
   

   Once you have started ngrok, update your TwiML application's voice URL setting to use your ngrok hostname. It will look something like this in your Twilio console:

   https://d06f533b.ngrok.io/callcongress/welcome

7. Start your development server:

   $ python manage.py runserver
   

   Once ngrok is running, open up your browser and go to your ngrok URL.

Run the Tests

Run the tests locally with coverage:

coverage run manage.py test

You can then view the coverage results with coverage report or build an HTML report with coverage html.

Note: If coverage seems to run way too many files, you can omit directories by adjusting your coverage command to something like coverage run --omit=venv/* manage.py test. See the coverage docs for more information.

Meta

• No warranty expressed or implied. Software is as is. Diggity.
• MIT License
• Lovingly crafted by Twilio Developer Education.