A CLI for Twilio

Prerequisites

1. Node.js >= 8.0
2. Running on Linux? Depending on your distribution, you will need to run the following command:
   Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install libsecret-1-dev
   Red Hat-based: sudo yum install libsecret-devel
   Arch Linux: sudo pacman -S libsecret

Eventually, the plan is to have self-contained packages for *nix systems and an installer for Windows with no need for manually installing prerequisites.

Setup

1. Install the CLI globally: npm install -g twilio-cli
2. Now you can run the CLI from anywhere using the twilio command.

Troubleshooting

• Resolving EACCES permissions errors when installing packages globally

Updating

1. Check if there's a new version: npm outdated -g twilio-cli
2. Update the CLI globally: npm update -g twilio-cli

Basic usage

Step 1 - Login (aka add a project)

twilio project:add

which is an alias for:

twilio project:add -p default

This is for caching your credentials for your existing Twilio account (aka Project) locally. Note, while you are prompted for your Account SID and Auth Token, these are not saved. An API Key is created (look for "twilio-cli for [username] on [hostname]" in the console) and stored in your system's keychain.

Want to use environment variables instead of creating a project?

You can also use credentials stored in environment variables:

OPTION 1 (recommended)

• TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID = your Account SID from your console
• TWILIO_API_KEY = an API Key created in your console
• TWILIO_API_SECRET = the secret for the API Key (you would have received this when you created an API key)

OPTION 2

• TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID = your Account SID from your console
• TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN = your Auth Token from your console

NOTE: Option 2 should only be used in cases where you are unable to make use of option 1 (which are uncommon).

Precedence of stored credentials

The CLI will attempt to load credentials in the following order of priority:

1. From the project specified with the -p parameter.
2. From the default project, if it exists.
3. From environment variables.

Step 2 - Explore

twilio

Lists all available commands.

twilio incoming-phone-number:list

Lists all your phone numbers.

Add --help to any command to get help (e.g. twilio incoming-phone-number:list --help)

Webhooks

You can set a webhook on a phone number like so:

twilio incoming-phone-number:update [PN sid or E.164] --sms-url http://url

That sets the primary SMS url. There are also options for setting the voice url, fallback urls, and methods for each. Run twilio incoming-phone-number:update --help for a full list of options.

Ngrok integration

When you set a webhook, if you specify a URL that uses the host name of localhost or 127.0.0.1, the twilio-cli will automatically create an ngrok tunnel for you and set your webhook to the new ngrok URL. For example:

twilio incoming-phone-number:update [PN sid or E.164] --sms-url http://localhost:5000/handle_sms

Output formats

All command output is sent to stdout (whereas logging messages are sent to stderr).

By default, the output is formatted in human readable form in a columnar format like so:

SID                                 Phone Number  Friendly Name
PNxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  +1209242XXXX  SIP testing
PNxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  +1646887XXXX  Congress hotline
PNxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  +1209337XXXX  DAVID'S TWILIO CONTACT

Many list commands will allow you to specify a --properties option to specify which columns you'd like to display. For example, to display only the Phone Number and SMS Url columns, you would pass --properties "phoneNumber, smsUrl".

Note that currently, the column names must match the JSON property names in the Twilio API.

JSON output format

On any command, you can add -o json to change the output format to JSON. When you choose JSON, the command will send the entire API response to stdout as JSON. You can then pipe to tools like jq to parse the JSON.

Tab separated values

To change the output format to tab separated values (TSV), add -o tsv to the command line. This format is useful for loading into spreadsheets or for other machine processing. Like the default, columnar output format, you can use the --properties option to specify which columns you would like included.

Logging messages

All debug, informational, warning, and error information is sent to stderr. This is so it can be easily separated from the command output. You can decide what level of logging you'd like by using the -l option. The valid levels of logging messages are debug, info, warn, error, and none.

Multiple Twilio accounts/projects

To store credentials for multiple projects, you can use a shorthand "project id" which is just an easy to remember, short string to identify the project. (If you've used git before, it's like the name you assign to a remote like "origin".)

When you run twilio project:add, it stores your credentials under a project called default. This is the project that will be used for all subsequent commands.

To add a second project after the default project, you can run twilio project:add -p my_other_proj (using whatever identifier you'd like in place of my_other_proj). Then, when you run subsequent commands, just include the -p my_other_proj in the command (e.g. twilio incoming-phone-number:list -p my_other_proj).

Plugins

twilio-cli can be extended via plugins.

At this time, only two plugins exist:

• twilio-run plugin: To streamline your Twilio Functions development workflow, Dominik Kundel created twilio-run. You can use twilio-run from within twilio-cli via the twilio-run plugin.

• twilio debugger plugin: The debugger plugin will display Twilio Degugger logs directly in your terminal.

Install a plugin

Plugins for the CLI can be installed using the twilio plugins command.

1. Install the plugin by it's package name:

   twilio plugins:install @twilio/plugin-debugger
   

2. Now, you can run your plugin command from the cli:

   twilio debugger:logs:list --help
   

3. Note: if you're using autocomplete see below, you'll need to run twilio autocomplete after installing a plugin and open a new terminal window. The cli needs to re-build it's cache.

Create a plugin

Want to write your own plugin? See this document.

Autocomplete

To enable autocomplete of CLI commands in bash or zsh, run:

twilio autocomplete

And follow the instructions.

Contributing

1. Clone this repo.
2. From the repo directory, run: npm install
3. Run ./bin/run from the repo directory to run the CLI.

Feedback

Please file a GitHub issue in this repository for any feedback you may have.

Release Notes

v1.0.0

Moving all related CLI libs to v1.0.0 per npm semver recommendation.

v0.1.2

• Moved config from ~/.config/@twilio/cli (Unix) and %LOCALAPPDATA%\@twilio\cli (Windows) to ~/.twilio and %USERPROFILE%\.twilio, respectively.

To copy over your existing configuration, run the following commands (Unix):

mkdir ~/.twilio
cp ~/.config/@twilio/cli/config.json ~/.twilio/config.json

• Added autocomplete support.
• Added support for credentials in environment variables.

License

MIT