This is a quick overview of how Gumband works and what you'll need to do in order to use it.

Register a keyword

Pick a keyword that you want to use for your application. Your users will text this keyword and any other message that you designate to the 25252 short code. For example, you might be using Gumband to create voting functionality. You could register the keyword MYVOTE, and instruct your users to text in MYVOTE followed by A, B, or C to 25252.

Set your keyphrase

This keyphrase is sort of like a password; we use it to compute a checksum that Gumband passes along with every message. You should compute the checksum on your end to verify that the message is from Gumband.

Tell Gumband what to do

Once you register a keyword, you need to give Gumband the URL where it should forward any messages for that keyword. When a message is sent to your keyword, Gumband forwards the message, the keyword, the user's mobile number, mobile carrier and checksum onto your endpoint. After that, it's up to you. You can process the message and do anything with the data, including sending an SMS text message back to the user. For our voting example, you would probably record the user's vote in a database and send a confirmation message back.

Here's an example endpoint to get you going.

That's it

That's all there is to it. Make sure to check out the examples for some actual code to get you going.