Using rapidsms-threadless-router with Kannel

Given the fact that threadless_router uses a Django view to handle incoming messages, instead of its own HTTP server like RapidSMS’s Kannel backend does, threadless_router fits perfectly with the Kannel model of sending and receiving all messages over HTTP in a simple, scalable way.

Kannel Configuration

Kannel configuration can be a non-trivial task, depending on what gateways you’re using. Complete details can be found in the Kannel documentation itself.

To configure Kannel to connect to a RapidSMS project that uses threadless_router, you need to add a few things to your Kannel configuration (usually /etc/kannel/kannel.conf).

  • Add a sendsms-user for RapidSMS to use to send outbound messages:

    group = sendsms-user
    username = rapidsms
    password = change-me
    user-deny-ip = "*.*.*.*"
    user-allow-ip = "127.0.0.1;"
    
  • Add an sms-service entry to pass inbound messages to RapidSMS:

    group = sms-service
    keyword = default
    # don't send a reply here (it'll come through sendsms):
    max-messages = 0
    get-url = http://127.0.0.1:8000/backend/my-kannel-backend/?id=%p&text=%a&charset=%C&coding=%c

threadless_router Configuration

The kannel backend provides an implementation of the http backend for integrating with Kannel. To enable the kannel backend on an existing project, complete the following steps:

  • Add kannel app to INSTALLED_APPS:

    INSTALLED_APPS = [
        # ...
        "threadless_router.backends.kannel",
        # ...
    ]
    
  • Add my-kannel-backend to INSTALLED_BACKENDS:

    INSTALLED_BACKENDS = {
        # ...
        "my-kannel-backend": {
            "ENGINE":  "threadless_router.backends.kannel.outgoing",
            "sendsms_url": "http://127.0.0.1:13013/cgi-bin/sendsms",
            "sendsms_params": {"smsc": "usb0-modem", # if you have more than one
                               "from": "1234", # may not be set automatically by SMSC
                               "username": "rapidsms",
                               "password": "change-me"},
            "coding": 0,
            "charset": "ascii",
            "encode_errors": "ignore", # strip out unknown (unicode) characters
        },
        # ...
    }
    
  • Add kannel urls:

    urlpatterns = patterns('',
        # ...
        (r'^backend/', include('threadless_router.backends.kannel.urls')),
        # ...
    )
    
  • Now incoming requests to /backend/my-kannel-backend/ will be handled by the newly configured Kannel backend.

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