How to Configure an HTTP GET Carrier Transcript for Video:
Welcome to the video tutorial on how to configure HTTP GET carriers in PageGate. In this tutorial, we'll be going over how to communicate with a web API that requires information to be submitted by an HTTP GET request.
Before we begin, to have PageGate communicate with a web API using the HTTP GET method, you'll need two bits of information.
First, you'll need the URL to submit the messages to and this should be provided by the web API host.
Second, you'll need the format and parameters to submit to the URL.
For example, let's say that this is our API URL:
https://yourmessagehost.com/api/software_relay/text_message/Secure
and let's also say that the parameters to submit are: API, FROM, TO and MESSAGE.
That would mean that a fully constructed HTTP GET statement to that API URL would be:
https://yourmessagehost.com/api/software_relay/text_message/Secure?
API=sms&FROM=YourSender&TO=YourRecipient&MESSAGE=YourMessage
Once you have the URL, parameter names and values, here's how to configure PageGate.
First, you'll want to open the PageGate Admin.
Next, right click on the Carriers section and select 'Add'.
Give the carrier a name. This can be anything you like but I do recommend giving it a straightforward name as that will make administration easier in the long run.
Next, select the HTTPGET protocol.
Once you do, it will ask for the host, port and max characters. You'll want to set the Host to match the API URL.
Set the Port to match the port that the host requires (http:// requests typically use port 80 and https:// requests typically use port 443)
Set the max characters to a value that reflects the type of message you're sending. For example, if you're sending SMS, set this to 160 as an SMS can only contain 160 characters. Set it to 240 for pagers and 6000 for email or any other form of message.
Click Apply to add the carrier in to the list, and then click on the + next to its name and go to the Template sub-section.
Here in the template, we're going to tell PageGate what parameters to submit in the URL, and we're also going to tell PageGate what data value each parameter needs.
To declare a parameter name and value, you'll use this format:
|Variable-Name|Value|
Note: The vertical bars seen above are called "pipe" symbols and can be found above the backslash (\) on most keyboards.
To use our earlier example, let's say there are four parameters to configure: API, FROM, TO and MESSAGE
API should be set to a static value of 'sms', so we'll add this line to the template:
|API|sms|
Next, we want to say that the FROM variable needs to have PageGate's %Sender% variable inserted.
|FROM|%Sender%|
Next, we want to say that the TO variable needs to have PageGate's %RecipientId% variable inserted.
|TO|%RecipientId%|
and last, we want to say that the MESSAGE variable needs to have PageGate's %Message% variable inserted.
|MESSAGE|%Message%|
So, the complete Text section of the carrier's template should look like this:
|API|sms|
|FROM|%Sender%|
|TO|%RecipientId%|
|MESSAGE|%Message%|
When finished, click Apply.
So, now we've taken this:
https://yourmessagehost.com/api/software_relay/text_message/Secure&
API=sms&FROM=YourSender&TO=YourRecipient&MESSAGE=YourMessage
Broken it down in to its two parts.
URL:
https://yourmessagehost.com/api/software_relay/text_message/Secure
Parameter names and values:
&API=sms&FROM=YourSender&TO=YourRecipient&MESSAGE=YourMessage
and configured PageGate to submit this information to the web API.
This concludes the tutorial on how to configure HTTPGET carriers in PageGate to communicate with a web API
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