How to get daily weather notification on mobile using Node.js and Twilio API ?

Last Updated : 11 May, 2020

Looking for weather information daily is a trivial task. As programmers, we can make this task easier by creating a notification service. We will use the Twilio SMS API for sending SMS and Node.js for writing the service which runs every day at a particular time.

Getting Twilio Credentials: To use Twilio APIs, we need to register our app and get the API keys from Twilio’s console. We need to get ACCOUNT SID, AUTH TOKEN, and TRIAL NUMBER. You can get all these credentials from here.

Twilio Console

Save these credentials to .env file in your project’s root directory along with your phone number. Since its a security best practice to save every credential in a separate file.

ACC_SID = 'your-account-sid'
AUTH_TOKEN = 'your-auth-token'
  
TO = 'your-number-with-country-code'
FROM = 'twilio-trial-number'

Sending SMS: In order to send SMS, we can use Twilio’s library for Node.js. Install the library using the following command:

npm install twilio

Now let’s test our credentials by sending a message. Add the following code to the index.js file.

// Getting Data from .env file 
const accountSid = process.env.ACC_SID; 
const authToken = process.env.AUTH_TOKEN; 
  
const twilio = require("twilio"); 
const client = new twilio(accountSid, authToken); 
  
client.messages 
    .create({ 
        body: "Hello from GeeksForGeeks!", 
        to: process.env.TO, 
        from: process.env.FROM 
    }) 
    .then(message => console.log(message.sid)); 

If all goes good then you will receive an SMS from Twilio with the text “Hello from GeeksForGeeks!”.

Getting the weather information: To get the latest weather information, we will use Openweathermap API which is freely available.

To use the API signup on the website and go to the dashboard to generate the API key as follows:

Openweather map.org Dashboard

We will use the Node.js’s request library to fetch the data from the API. Install the dependency using the following command:

npm install request

And then add the following code snippet to the index.js file.

// Import request library 
const request = require("request"); 
  
function getdata() { 
    request( 
"http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=delhi&appid=<your-api-key>&units=metric", 
    { json: true }, 
    (err, res, body) => { 
        if (err) { 
            return console.log(err); 
        } 
  
        // Printing fetched data 
        console.log(body);  
    }); 
} 
  
// Calling function 
getData(); 

Now, create a function to send notification data and add the code for sending SMS like below:

// Send message 
function sendNotification(msg) { 
  client.messages 
    .create({ 
      body: msg, 
      to: process.env.TO, 
      from: process.env.FROM 
    }) 
    .then(message => console.log(message.sid)); 
} 

Now we have to create a message from the data received from the weather API. Replace the getData() function with the following code:

function getdata(){ 
  request( 
    "http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=delhi&appid=<your-api-key>&units=metric", 
    { json: true }, 
    (err, res, body) => { 
        if (err) { 
            return console.log(err); 
        } 
        
        // Create a message 
        let msg = `\nToday's Weather : \n${body.weather[0].main}, ${body.main.temp}°C\nHumidity : ${body.main.humidity}%     
      `; 
        
        // Calling Send Message function 
        sendNotification(msg); 
    }); 
} 

Now, to send the message every day, we have to set up a cronjob using the node-cron library.

npm install node-cron

Add the cronjob to call getData() method every day at 8:00 AM:

// Importing library 
const twilio = require("node-cron"); 
  
// Cronjob runs everyday at 8:00 AM 
cron.schedule("0 8 * * *", () => { 
  
    // Calling getData method which 
    // calls the send message method 
    getData();  
}); 