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Diagram of workflow
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Working test example
Inspiration
We were inspired to help the developing world in areas where data service might not be properly set up, and a text based browsing system would be useful to load data.
What it does
On the basic level, it allows users to browse the web in a stripped down all text environment. The user can submit a url as an sms message, all the processing is done on the backend, and the server returns a pure text representation of the webpage. Pure SMS for the end user!
How I built it
Twilio's API was critical to get the interface up and running quickly, it allowed super simple messaging services. The backend is entirely python running in flask deployed on AWS. Right now user sessions are just stored in flask, but we built and deployed a MYSQL database that we are hoping to use to improve the scalability/user experience when we get the chance.
Challenges I ran into
One of the biggest challenges of this project was parsing and displaying a menu from a webpage. The modern web is a jumble of generated sources, and figuring what was actually a menu item/relevant content was pretty difficult, and still a work in progress.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Working (mostly) end to end! We got the whole project deployed into AWS, which makes continued development/deployment easier. Also, it was fun to work on something that we could actually see benefiting people throughout the developing world (with a lot more refinement of course).
What I learned
Deployed a flask app for the first time on aws, none of us had ever used Twilio for something of this scale before, and learned a bunch about parsing on the front end to get the info we actually wanted.
What's next for browSMS
Better data parsing Improved menu layout Better user sessions built on top of MYSQL Options for more images/menus/etc. Add a splash page to browsms.me to introduce users to the service Develop an android app for parsing actual returned html and displaying it as a webpage
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