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Welcome to the Mozes Developer Wiki! Home of the Mozes Developer API
This is the place where you find all info the API Mozes provides to developers. Check the left navigation for helpful links and resources. Unfortunately, due to spam, we have had to make most of the pages uneditable, but you can send us feedback using the addresses listed here.
What is the Mozes Developer API?
The Mozes Developer API expands the power and impact of a text message. It provides a way to use Mozes keywords to interface with systems outside of the Mozes system. A keyword on Mozes can be configured to execute a web script on a different system, receive XML-formatted data and display dynamic content via SMS or the web within the Mozes system.
In other words, you can add your own scripts to a keyword. You don't have to get approval from us or wait for us to support your application - just set up your script, tell our system how to get at your script, and you're up and running!
What can I do with the Mozes Developer API?
Nearly anything you can think of! If you think of a text message on a mobile phone as a command line, the Mozes Developer API can connect that command to your system. Then let your imagination run wild as to what you can control. Two main areas of interest we have seen so far are
- Using text messaging as a remote control input into another system
- Look at the Coffee Machine Starter example
- Making existing web applications accessible via text messaging
- Text "libra" to 66937 used by TheAstrologer.com
The same widespread support for applications available via the Web, which anyone can run without installing special software, is now available over the cell phone. Anyone can run your script, anywhere their cell phone can get a signal - and the carriers already take care of authenticating the users (if you use our userid and sendid tags, though users will have to identify themselves to you before you know them as more than an encrypted number). What can you do with that kind of access?
How do I get started?
It is simple to get going:
- Join the Mozes Developer mailing list
- Read the docs, including the Quick Start Example and the full API Documentation (and the Mozes Developer API Agreement, which you are presumed to have read and agreed to before using the API - some say that most of it boils down to "you agree to use common sense", but spells out out that "common" sense, just like most legal boilerplate)
- Set up a keyword that uses the API:
- Register an account for your mobile phone if you have not done so already.
- Log in, click on My Stufftab (if you are not already there), and click on Edit card on your card preview. (Depending on where you accessed this wiki from, you may have done this too.)
- You'll find the Dynamic Content URL field under the Profile tab, and the Text Message field under the Actions tab.
- Note: the user interface is designed to emphasize macros and other automatic configuration, but if you are using the API, you may want to ignore most of our other features. Then again, almost all of them are designed to work alongside the API if desired, for the benefit of our most advanced users.
- Of course, you also need to have a script on the Web that you can point to. If you do not happen to own your own Web server, there are services out there that will host your script for you. We reccomend searching on "script hosting service" (or "PHP hosting service" or "Perl hosting service" or whatever language you write in) instead of "Web hosting service", as most Web hosting services do not allow you to upload your own scripts, but you want one that does. Mozes does not endorse or recommend any particular service provider.
- TEST YOUR SCRIPT! The reason we built this API using URLs was to allow developers to easily emulate Mozes and call their scripts from any Web browser. If your script is returning server errors instead of valid XML, your keyword will probably not work as intended. If you are worried that this creates a security hole in that other people could impersonate Mozes, your script should check the connection to confirm that a given request is in fact coming either from us or from the addresses you test your scripts from.
