SMS Notification Service

Overview

The objective of this service is to create a common point to manage all the SMS notifications being sent out of the platform. Notification SMS service consumes SMS from the Kafka notification topic and processes them to send it to a third-party service. Modules like PT, TL, PGR etc make use of this service to send messages through the Kafka Queue.

Pre-requisites

Before you proceed with the documentation, make sure the following pre-requisites are met -

  • Prior knowledge of Java/J2EE

  • Prior knowledge of SpringBoot

  • Prior knowledge of Third party API integration

  • Prior knowledge of REST APIs and related concepts like path parameters, headers, JSON etc

  • Prior knowledge of Kafka and related concepts like Producer, Consumer, Topic etc.

Key Functionalities

  • Provide a common platform to send an SMS notification to the user.

  • Support localised SMS.

  • Easily configurable with a different SMS service provider.

Interaction Diagram

Configuration Details

This service is a consumer, which means it reads from the Kafka queue and does not provide a facility to be accessed through API calls, there’s no REST layer here. The producers willing to integrate with this consumer will be posting a JSON onto the topic configured at ‘kafka.topics.notification.sms.name’. The notification-sms service reads from the queue and sends the sms to the mentioned phone number using one of the SMS providers configured.

The implementation of the consumer is present in the directory

src/main/java/org/egov/web/notification/sms/service/impl.

These are the current providers available

  • Generic

  • Console

  • MSDG

The implementation to be used can be configured by setting sms.provider.class.

Console

The Console implementation just prints the message mobile number and message to the console

Generic implementation

This is the default implementation, which can work with most SMS providers. The generic implementation supports below

  • GET or POST-based API

  • Supports query params, form data, JSON Body

To configure the URL of the SMS provider use sms.provider.url property To configure the HTTP method use this to configure the sms.provider.requestType property to either GET or POST.

To configure form data or json API set sms.provider.contentType=application/x-www-form-urlencoded or sms.provider.contentType=application/json respectively

To configure which data needs to be sent to the API below property can be configured:

  • sms.config.map={'uname':'$username', 'pwd': '$password', 'sid':'$senderid', 'mobileno':'$mobileno', 'content':'$message', 'smsservicetype':'unicodemsg', 'myParam': '$extraParam' , 'messageType': '$mtype'}

  • sms.category.map={'mtype': {'*': 'abc', 'OTP': 'def'}}

  • sms.extra.config.map={'extraParam': 'abc'}

sms.extra.config.map is not used currently and is only kept for custom implementation which requires data that doesn't need to be directly passed to the REST API call

sms.config.map is a map of parameters and their values

Special variables that are mapped

  • $username maps to sms.provider.username

  • $password maps to sms.provider.password

  • $senderid maps to sms.senderid

  • $mobileno maps to mobileNumber from kafka fetched message

  • $message maps to the message from the kafka fetched message

  • $<name> any variable that is not from the above list, is first checked in sms.category.map and then in application.properties and then in the environment variable with full upper case and _ replacing -, space or .

So if you use sms.config.map={'u':'$username', 'p':'password'}. Then the API call will be passed <url>?u=<$username>&p=password

Message Success or Failure

Message success delivery can be controlled using the below properties

  • sms.verify.response (default: false)

  • sms.print.response (default: false)

  • sms.verify.responseContains

  • sms.success.codes (default: 200,201,202)

  • sms.error.codes

If you want to verify some text in the API call response set sms.verify.response=true and sms.verify.responseContains to the text that should be contained in the response.

Blacklisting or Whitelisting numbers

It is possible to whitelist or blacklist phone numbers to which the messages should be sent. This can be controlled using below properties:

  • sms.blacklist.numbers

  • sms.whitelist.numbers

Both of them can be given a , separated list of numbers or number patterns. To use patterns use X for any digit match and * for any number of digits match.

sms.blacklist.numbers=5*,9999999999,88888888XX will blacklist any phone number starting with 5, or the exact number 9999999999 and all numbers starting from 8888888800 to 8888888899

Prefixing

Few 3rd parties require a prefix of 0 or 91 or +91 with the mobile number. In such a case you can use sms.mobile.prefix to automatically add the prefix to the mobile number coming into the message queue.

Error Handling

There are different topics to which the service will send messages. Below is a list of the same:

1kafka.topics.backup.sms 2kafka.topics.expiry.sms=egov.core.sms.expiry 3kafka.topics.error.sms=egov.core.sms.error

In an event of a failure to send an SMS, if kafka.topics.backup.sms is specified, then the message will be pushed onto that topic.

Any SMS which expires due to Kafka lags, or some other internal issues, they will be passed to the topic configured in kafka.topics.expiry.sms

If a backup the topic has not been configured, then in an event of an error the same will be delivered to kafka.topics.error.sms

Following are the properties in the application.properties file in the notification sms service which are configurable.

Property
Value
Remarks

kafka.topics.notification.sms.name

egov.core.notification.sms

It is the topic name to which the notification sms consumer would subscribe. Any module wanting to integrate with this consumer should post data on this topic only.

sms.provider.class

Generic

This property decides which SMS provider is to be used by the service to send messages. Currently, Console, MSDG and Generic have been implemented.

sms.provider.contentType

application/x-www-form-urlencoded

To configure form data or json api set sms.provider.contentType=application/x-www-form-urlencoded or sms.provider.contentType=application/json respectively

sms.provider.requestType

POST

Property to configure the http method used to call provider

sms.provider.url

http://abc.in

URL of the provider. This will be given by the SMS provider only.

sms.provider.username

egovsms

Username as provided by the provider which is passed during the API call to the provider.

sms.provider.password

abc123

Password as provided by the provider which is passed during the API call to the provider. This has to be encrypted and stored

sms.senderid

EGOV

SMS sender id provided by the provider, this will show up as the sender on receiver’s phone.

sms.config.map

{'uname':'$username', 'pwd': '$password', 'sid':'$senderid', 'mobileno':'$mobileno', 'content':'$message', 'smsservicetype':'unicodemsg', 'myParam': '$extraParam' , 'messageType': '$mtype'}

Map of parameters to be passed to the API provider. This is provider-specific. $username maps to sms.provider.username

$password maps to sms.provider.password

$senderid maps to sms.senderid

$mobileno maps to mobileNumber from kafka fetched message

$message maps to the message from the kafka fetched message

$<name> any variable that is not from above list, is first checked in sms.category.map and then in application.properties and then in environment variable with full upper case and _ replacing -, space or

sms.category.map

{'mtype': {'*': 'abc', 'OTP': 'def'}}

replace any value in sms.config.map

sms.blacklist.numbers

5*,9999999999,88888888XX

For blacklisting, a “,” separated list of numbers or number patterns. To use patterns use X for any digit match and * for any number of digits match

sms.whitelist.numbers

5*,9999999999,88888888XX

For whitelisting, a “,” separated list of numbers or number patterns. To use patterns use X for any digit match and * for any number of digits match

sms.mobile.prefix

91

add the prefix to the mobile number coming in the message queue

Deployment Details

  1. Add the variables present in the above table in a particular environment file

  2. Deploy the latest version of egov-notification-sms service.

Integration Details

Integration Scope

Notification SMS service consumes SMS from the Kafka notification topic and processes them to send it to a third-party service. Modules like PT, TL, PGR etc make use of this service to send messages through the Kafka Queue.

Integration Benefits

  • Provide an interface to send notification SMS on user mobile number.

  • Support SMS in various languages.

Integration Steps

  1. To integrate, create the SMS request body given in the example below. Provide the correct mobile number and message in the request body and send it to the Kafka topic:- egov.core.notification.sms

  2. The notification-sms service reads from the queue and sends the sms to the mentioned phone number using one of the SMS providers configured.

{
  "mobileNumber": "9480411228",
  "message": "Hey, how you doing?"
}

Reference Docs

Play around with the API's : DIGIT-Playground

Doc Links

Title

SMS Template Approval Process

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