Detecting an SMS reply | Search |
NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ MMS & SMS Technical Discussions (unsupported) ⬆ Archive through March 23, 2004 ⬆ |
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Author | Message | |||
Alejandro Guerrieri Unregistered guest |
Hi All, I'm developing an SMS message-based application. It would be very handful, when processing messages for the app, to know if the message is an MO new message or the result of a reply from a previously sent MT message. So the question is: Is there any way, from the app's point of view, to know if the message is a brand-new one or if it's the reply to a previous message? Is there any header or something similar to determine this? I've checked the SMS protocol specs, and I didn't find anything similar (Reply-Path just sounds similar, but it's not what I'm looking for isn't it?). Thank you in advance, | |||
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 1637 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hi Alejandro, I agree that would be incredibly useful. Unfortunately, in my experience I haven't seen any specification that covered this, or in looking at raw SMS messages, seen any field that is used for this purpose. In our SMS e-mail gateway, we handle this either by requiring the user to enter a code number as the first text of a message that is a reply ... or we require multiple phone numbers to be allocated to the gateway, so that different messages can be sent out from different phone numbers, so that when a reply comes in, the context can be determined based upon which number the message comes back into. -bn | |||
Alejandro Guerrieri Unregistered guest |
Dear Bryce, Thank you for your response. I've also read the whole SMS Protocol Specification and didn't find anything similar to that. I am evaluating many options to overcome the problem, mainly those two you mention among a couple more. I am also thinking about implementing some kind of "time window", i.e: The SMS app named [foo] sends a message at time [t] to the mobile number [123456], so any message for [foo] that comes back in [t+n] hours from [123456] is considered a reply (or maybe just the first message). It's not perfect, I know, but I think that's the nearer I´ll be. I also like the code-as-first-word way.} Regards,} | |||
Alejandro Guerrieri Unregistered guest |
Dear Bryce, Thank you for your response. I've also read the whole SMS Protocol Specification and didn't find anything similar to that. I am evaluating many options to overcome the problem, mainly those two you mention among a couple more. I am also thinking about implementing some kind of "time window", i.e: The SMS app named [foo] sends a message at time [t] to the mobile number [123456], so any message for [foo] that comes back in [t+n] hours from [123456] is considered a reply (or maybe just the first message). It's not perfect, I know, but I think that's the nearer I´ll be. I also like the code-as-first-word way.} Regards,}} | |||
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 1649 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hi Alejandro, As long as you're not sending a high volume (only one SMS could be active at a time), that should be fine. If that is the case, consider using the "Replace Message type" DCS setting when sending your messages. That way you won't have a situation where a user is replying to an older message, because any new message you send to that user replaces the older one. -bn |