octopus - AfricasTalking API demo app

A simple demo app on USSD, messaging (shortcode), mobile payments (mpesa), airtime and Voice API's.

• Register through ShortCode/ USSD
• Call number
• Push USSD - M-pesa payment
• Call number - to thank subscribers
• Message the number

OR

• Voice command recorded and pushed to WIT then airtime sent based on answer?

Why Redis?

• A temporary in memory database is great to 'persist' variables. And also avoid unbounded growth of queues and variables. Its easy to reason about persistence in Redis, its a data structure server. And we love data structures! :D

• RQ. We use RQ as an ORM to redis, nothing fancy here.

• Twisted/ gevent/ gunicorn. Well, it's voice. Why not make the req/ rep cycle more concurrent? Greenlets rock!

Why WIT

• Lets not write a boring SMS based app. Lets write some AI, an Uber/ Waze on SMS maybe :)

API endpoints

• /api/shortcode/callback/
• /api/ussd/callback/
• /api/voice/callback/
• /api/messaging/dlr/callback/

Flask

• Use a .env for your app TOKENS! Don't push them to git.
• Don't use flask globals (avoid binding g to the req context)