Use of punctuation in twilio sms api

If you are dealing with a black box like an API not being documented, it's always a good idea to escape data as much as needed i.e. through removing special characters or replacing them with something else.

In case you are calling a service via REST, remember to urlencode() [1] data before sending it, i.e.

$msg= urlencode(strip_tags('This is my messed-up text with \' " /\ and the like'));

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Could you post a snippet how you are calling the Twilio API inside of your PHP file?

I'll post code today when I'm at work. I'm using urlencode now & I added stripslashes as well to get it to work. It is a REST service.

After the problem I experienced yesterday, I'm nervous of others that could arise ...

I don't know if this applies to all SMS notifications sent through Twilio, but it seems as if a maximum of 160 characters is allowed; depending on the way Twilio handles incoming REST calls, urlencoded characters can easily break that limit. There are some useful topics in the debug section of their homepage, i.e.:
* Twilio Debugging Interface [1]
* Notification REST API, query for logs [2]

All information found here:

Debugging your application [3]

Good luck and keep us posted!

[1] http://www.twilio.com/user/account/debugger
[2] http://www.twilio.com/docs/api/rest/notification
[3] http://www.twilio.com/docs/errors/

Yet again ... Thanks for the direction Ray.

stripslashes works, but it isn't necc if magic_quotes wasn't on.

during the development stage, this is hosted on a shared server.

once it's live (Possibly as early as May 1st.. whew) - we'll take it to a vps where I'll have control over security settings like this one...

Thanks for the points - it's a great question, ~Ray