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I hope I asked this correctly.

We created an mobile app using ionic. It can talk to the servers online. So far so good.

Then, a requirement - the app MUST be able to send something OFFLINE. Reason, the users are in a remote area where internet is not available.

With the HTTP POST not available, the only thing now is the SMS. And with the plugin, we are able to send SMS through the telcos of the phone.

Now, the problem, is there any example of the SMS Gateway that receives the SMS from our phone + processes them?

For example, let's say i am sending a json {name:'bob'} to the SMS Gateway, there should be some logic to process this SMS and the update the database in our own hosting server.

Any example of this kind of product/server?

EDIT

My original question is kind of confusing as I thought most third-party gateways are serving as 'sending SMS online only'.

But thanks to @TimCastelijns who points out something like 'Inbound SMS', which is what i wanted.

Basically, buy/rent a number from the gateway. The number, upon receiving SMS, will be able to POST message to our own web hosting servers.

zeroflaw
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  • Try nexmo, it's pretty straightforward and does what it should. Keep in mind services like these cost money. – Tim Aug 29 '16 at 08:23
  • @TimCastelijns Thanks for the suggestion. But as observed, nexmo serves something like twilio or other SMS gateway which ONLY send SMS but NOT post-processing it. Correct me if this is wrong. – zeroflaw Aug 29 '16 at 08:25
  • no SMS service/gateway will do the processing for you. They all just forward the payload to your server where you have to process it yourself – Tim Aug 29 '16 at 08:27
  • @TimCastelijns Great to hear that statement. So, how our server 'receives' that payload? let say i am using C# or ASP.NET, how does the API of our own servers receives the SMS? If our Server is able to receive the SMS, why do we still need third-party SMS gateway? what is their role? – zeroflaw Aug 29 '16 at 08:30
  • Typically, the gateway will receive the sms and makes a POST request to your server (you can tell the gateway what url to POST to) with the content of the sms and some meta data like timestamps sent/received, sender, receiver, etc – Tim Aug 29 '16 at 08:32
  • If your server is capable of receiving sms messages and you want to handle it yourself, you don't need a 3rd party gateway – Tim Aug 29 '16 at 08:33
  • @TimCastelijns I see. So, the gateway server has to be online (so that it is able to POST request to our servers). In that case, since we are in offline mode, when we send message, it charges our own telco. Meanwhile, the SMS Gateway charges for 'receiving our message' + POST request to our server? – zeroflaw Aug 29 '16 at 08:38
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/122081/discussion-between-zflaw-and-tim-castelijns). – zeroflaw Aug 29 '16 at 08:38

1 Answers1

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This is solved by @TimeCastelijins. He mentions something called 'Inbound SMS'. SMS Gateway doesn't process the SMS, but POST to our web hosting server upon receiving the SMS from the client.

zeroflaw
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