| Need help : Acronymn hell and jargon busting |  Search
|
|
NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ MMS & SMS Technical Discussions (unsupported) ⬆ Archive through March 23, 2004 ⬆ |
◄ ► |
| Author | Message | |||
| Douglass Turner New member Username: Dugla Post Number: 1 Registered: 11-2003 |
Hello, I'm developing a SOAP/XML powered image processing service for mobile handsets. I am currently lost in the fog of acronymn's and obscure jargon of MMS applications. Can some kind soul please sketch for me a simple, trivial, example of a user with an MMS enabled handset submitting a picture to my server (Apache + PHP + SOAP) and how my service would return the processed image to the handset. The analogus PC based example is trivial. I'm having real headaches getting a handle on the mobile handset version. My current understanding is that the Now MMS Gateway is an MMSC + other coolness with communication links to my Apache/PHP powered services. 1) For starters how do I configure an MMS enabled handset to send and MMS to the Now MMS Gateway? 2) How do I unwrap the image from the MMS format, process it, wrap it back up in MMS goodness, and return the results to the handset? Cheers, Douglass Turner | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 1167 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hi Douglass, Where to start? Hmm ... I don't disagree that there is too much jargon and too many acronyms. The challenge that we've had in developing the Now SMS/MMS Gateway is that there is no one configuration that meets everyone's needs. While the MMS standard is firmly defined, there are quite a few different implementation issues that can affect you. Let's take this statement as an example:
Basically, when it comes to MMS, NowSMS can either be an MMSC ... or it can be a gateway that interfaces with an existing MMSC at a mobile operator. How do you know which configuration is appopriate? Well, some of this depends on how the operator MMSCs are deployed in your country (and/or the countries that you are targeting with your content). At a basic level, an MMSC is a specialised web server. When a phone wants to send an MMS message, it creates a binary encoded (MMS Encapsulation format) MMS message, and performs an HTTP POST to the MMSC. (This HTTP POST usually is submitted through a WAP gateway ... the client performs a WSP POST to the WAP gateway, which gets converted to an HTTP POST by the WAP gateway.) When the MMSC sees that it has a message to deliver to a recipient, it sends a special MMS notification message (over WAP push, which generally gets sent over SMS) to the recipient handset. This notification message contains header information about the message, plus a URL link to the content of the message which has been placed into temporary storage on the MMSC. When the recipient handset receives this notification message, it parses the notification, and then opens up a data connection to retreive (HTTP GET, or WSP GET through a WAP gateway) to receive the message content. When NowSMS acts as an MMSC, you have the ability to provision users on the MMSC so that they can submit messages through NowSMS. (This is usually only a feature that a mobile operator would use, or someone else with a closed community of MMS users.) Also, when NowSMS acts as an MMSC, it performs direct delivery of MMS messages as I describe above. MMS message content is temporarily stored on the NowSMS gateway ... and NowSMS sends out the MMS notification messages directly using WAP push over SMS. Why do you need to know about this? Well, this is is one of the operator specific issues that you can run into. In order to send and receive MMS messages, there are settings that are configured in an MMS compatible mobile phone for the MMS client. These settings specify which GPRS APN to use when connecting to the GPRS network to send or receive MMS ... which WAP gateway to connect through ... and also a URL for the MMSC (which is primarily relevent only when the phone sends an MMS message). Whether or not you can use NowSMS as an MMSC to perform direct delivery depends on whether or not the URL for the NowSMS MMSC is accessible via the GPRS APN and WAP Gateway IP that is pre-configured in the operator's mobile phones. Some operators have setup separate GPRS APNs and WAP gateways for MMS, and they will only allow mobile phones to retrieve MMS messages from the operator MMSC. (The phone may receive a notification from other MMSCs, but will not be able to retrieve the message content.) NowSMS also includes the ability to interface with operator MMSCs for sending out MMS messages. In these situations, if your operator supports an interface for connecting to their MMSC to send messages, NowSMS supports all of the major interfaces for doing this ... including the ability to do this over a mobile phone acting as a modem. So a lot of the confusion really is focused on connectivity issues which can be operator specific. So with that prelude, let's try to address your specific queries ...
This depends on whether you want to configure the phone to actually use NowSMS as the MMSC, or whether you just want to be able to send a message to the gateway that you can parse with your application. If you want to configure the phone to use NowSMS as the MMSC, then please see: http://www.nowsms.com/documentation/ProductDocumentation/mms_notifications_and_c ontent/MMSC_Messaging_Server.htm If you want a mobile phone to be able to send an MMS message to an application ... and you want to keep the sender's mobile phone so that it sends messages through the operator MMSC ... then unless your operator offers an account on their MMSC which allows you to receive MMS messages through another API (most don't) ... the easiest way to do this is connecting a GSM/GPRS modem to the Now SMS/MMS Gateway. The SIM card in the GSM/GPRS modem needs to be provisioned for MMS access. Users can send a message in to that phone number, and NowSMS can retrieve the MMS message content, and parse it into an XML/SOAP format or e-mail format for routing to your application (there is also a file based interface). It can be a bit tricky getting things configured so that you can receive MMS messages over a GSM/GPRS modem. The following docs will help out: http://www.nowsms.com/documentation/ProductDocumentation/mms_notifications_and_c ontent/Connecting_to_operator_MMSC.htm Just note that you will need the MMS settings specific to your mobile operator. The format for how received messages can be presented to your application can be found here: http://www.nowsms.com/documentation/ProductDocumentation/2_way_mms_support.htm One other note ... while many mobile phones provide GSM modem support, our experience has been that these phones are fine for sending and receiving SMS, and for sending MMS ... but that they do not work for receiving MMS (because the MMS client in the phone always grabs the message, and it is not presented to the modem interface). So you will require a dedicated GSM/GPRS modem device, such as the Siemens MC35.
We'll do most of the parsing ... since you're working with XML/SOAP, you'll probably want to use the MM7 interface. An example of a submitting an MMS message via MM7 can be found here: http://www.nowsms.com/documentation/ProductDocumentation/mms_notifications_and_c ontent/Submitting_MMS_Messages_MM7.htm The format in which you will receive the MM7 message is similar, just that it is a "DeliverReq" instead of a "SubmitReq". I hope this helps clarify some of the issues ... if not, let me know. -bn | |||
