Send an MMS Message

Overview

Easily send an MMS message with some media content.

Authentication

Authentication is done by passing your TSG Global API key via the Authorization header in the format "Authorization: Bearer <api_key>" (using the messaging API key specifically). API credentials can be found here: https://customer-portal.tsgglobal.com/account

Method

Send an MMS message.

POST https://mmsc.tsgglobal.world/mms

The MMS API attempts to mirror an MM4 request, as such it shares some structural similarities and naming. Particularly the use of the ‘type’ field to denote the type of request. Currently only Forward Requests are available.

Request Body

Name	Type	Description
id	string	An id, this id may be used to track the message. Note: this can be considered a reference_id.
type*	string	What type of data should we expect with this message. Should always be "mms-forward-req"Note: failure to provide this value will cause the request to fail immediately.
expires_at	datetime	An ISO8601 formatted timestamp, this designates when the message should expire within the system, expired messages will be refunded if they expire before leaving the queues.
expires_in	integer	A duration in seconds after the message has been received to expire, this will be added to the time of receving the message to create an expires_at value.
transaction_id	string	This field will be used as the transaction-id of the message, if none is provided, one will be generated.
from*	string	The originator number, should be formatted as E164.
to*	list<string>	A list of recipients, each number should be formatted as E164.
subject	string	An optional subject header to apply to the message.
headers	map	An optional map of additional headers to include in the message.
metadata	map	Any additional data to include in the payload, will be returned on response.
parts*	list	A list of parts that make up the body of the message.
kind	string	What kind of content does the part contain?, default “plain”.
headers	map<string, string>	Any additional headers to include in the part.
content_type	string	What is the media type of the part?, if none is given this will default to text/plain, unless the kind is a uri or data-uri.
content_location	string	The name of the attachment, in case a custom SMIL is provided, this will allow referencing the part.
content_encoding	string	Any special encodings applied to the body of the part, usually a compression method.
transfer_encoding	string	Any special encodings applied to the body of the part, normally for transport over HTTP/S.
body*	string	The body or content of the part, may or not be encoded as required.
uri	string	A URI that is publically accessible that can be downloaded to get the content of the MMS. Content exceeding 3mb will be rejected.
request_delivery_reports	boolean	Requesting DLR for the message to be sent to you. Defaults to false

200: OK Upon successfully sending an MMS request you will receive a response. This does not mean that the MMS has been sent or delivered, only that it has been accepted by the system for further processing.

{
    // Response
}

Example POST

{
  "data": {
    "id": "1354f59f-7cfc-46de-981a-f750d443f9ec",
    "type": "mms-forward-req",
    "attributes": {
      "from": "[phone]",
      "to": ["[phone]"],
      "subject": "This is a test",
      "transaction_id": "c52e6196-4ef6-4ce4-8c89-a0a12791c298",
      "request_delivery_reports": true,
      "headers": {
        "cc": ["[e-mail]"],
        "to": ["[e-mail]", "[e-mail]"]
      },
      "parts": [
        {
          "kind": "plain",
          "headers": {},
          "content_type": "text/plain",
          "content_location": "my_text.txt",
          "content_encoding": "identity",
          "transfer_encoding": "identity",
          "body": "Hello, World",
          "uri": null,
          "metadata": {}
        },
        {
          "body": null,
          "content_encoding": "identity",
          "content_location": null,
          "content_type": "image/png",
          "decoded": false,
          "headers": {},
          "kind": "uri",
          "metadata": {},
          "transfer_encoding": "identity",
          "uri": "http://example.com/image.png"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Delivery Receipts (DLRs)

DLRs for MMS messages are customer-enabled by optionally flagging a request for a DLR when POSTing to the API. Please include “request_delivery_reports”: true as in the above example, requesting that a DLR be sent to you. Omitting or setting it to false will result in no DLRs being forwarded to you.

Part Kinds

• plain

{
  "kind": "plain",
  "body": "Hello, World"
}

Plain parts are used for text attachments, these include text/* media types that do not include any binary or restricted characters (i.e. nulls).

• data-uri

{
  "kind": "data-uri",
  "content_location": "MyText.txt",
  "uri": "data:text/plain;name=<MyText.txt>,Hello%20World"
}

RFC2397 data URIs may be used to specify content_encoding, content_type and body in a single string. These strings however have a 65535 character limit.

• uri

{
  "kind": "uri",
  "content_type": "item.png",
  "uri": "http://example.org/item.png"
}

Parts can also be provided as URIs, the content_type will be taken from the request or determined based on the extension of the link.

Content downloaded from a URI must be 3 MB or less, otherwise it will be rejected and the message will have a nulled attachment.

The requested resource MUST return a valid Content-Length, failure to do so will result in the attachment being nullified. NOTE: The server MUST respond to HEAD and GET requests for the attachment to be retrieved.

• embedded

{
  "kind": "embedded",
  "content_type": "image/png",
  "transfer_encoding": "base64",
  "body": "iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQCAYAAAAf8/9hAAAABmJLR0QA/wD/AP+gvaeTAAAACXBIWXMAAAsTAAALEwEAmpwYAAAAB3RJTUUH4QwLFhYQGrly9gAAAB1pVFh0Q29tbWVudAAAAAAAQ3JlYXRlZCB3aXRoIEdJTVBkLmUHAAAApUlEQVQ4y2P8//8/Q1N6wH8GMkDdzA2MjI1p/v+l5MQYRMQESNL85tUHhmePXjEwMTAwkKwZWQ8TqRovnbmFwmeiRDNJBsA065mokW4ATLOUnBiGHAu5NmO44NKZWxh+xGczhgEwGy6ducXw5tUHFMPwRTNKGMBsevboFYYYUQaIiAlgaCCUyJiwpTCYIbgCjmAsiIgJEJ28mWAZg1QA08NIaXYGABYVP8mp45LoAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC"
}

Parts MAY be embedded, in which all the data is included but MAY be compressed or encoded in a different format for transfer. Data in an embedded body must NOT exceed 1Mb (when compressed)

The body of the part will be decoded by applying:

• transfer_encoding

• content_encoding

To encode the part, apply the encodings in the reverse.

Note: All headers are subject to filter and may be excluded.

Any headers that start with following will not be added to the message:

• x-mms-

• content-

• checksum-

• x-checksum-

• message-id

Example 200 OK Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Server: Cowboy
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2019 18:50:03 GMT
X-Request-ID: FdBbQM5NGxGrvxkAAAUG

{
  "data": {
    "id": "4e36a1f7-fd9c-4851-8087-918902fc204e",
    "type": "mms-forward-res",
    "attributes": {
      "inserted_at": "2019-10-24T00:48:53.312285Z",
      "transaction_id": "e7184cf1-1837-4318-a2cd-82c847830541",
      "from": "12003004005",
      "to": ["13746648333"],
      "subject": "Hello",
      "headers": {},
      "messages": [{
        "message_id": "9f3a72e9-7dc2-4741-96c7-ff2049b49b11",
        "to": "13746648333"
      }],
      "parts": [
        {
          "id": "text-part@localhost",
          "content_type": "text/plain",
          "content_length": "11",
          "content_encoding": "identity",
          "transfer_encoding": "identity",
          "kind": "plain"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

data.attributes.messages will contain a message for each recipient. The provided message_id will be used to reference the message in DLRs.

Additional Examples

Example - Escape Special Characters

# Single character
\n - Line-feed / New-line
\r - Carriage-return
\s - Whitespace (spaces are printable however)
\t - Horizontal-tab
# Unicode
\uXXXX - Unicode character, here X is a hexadecimal value

Example - New Lines in Body

// Incorrect
{
  "body": "These
    are
    new
    lines
    that
    aren't
    escaped
    "
}

// Correct
{
  "body": "These\nare\nnew\nlines\nthat\nare\nescaped"
}

Example - the UTF-8 character - for more information please refer to RFC8259

{
  "body": "Have a smile 😁"
}

Example - JSON Unicode escape

{
  "body": "Have a smile \uD83D\uDE00",
}

Frequently Asked Questions

Q - What is the maximum plain body text limit for an MMS message A - We recommend using 1000 characters or less.

Q - How many participants can I have in an MMS conversation A - We recommend having 10 or fewer participants in an MMS conversation.

Q - My request failed with a 400 Bad Request and a message saying unexpected character at X A - The JSON payload was malformed, did you include any new lines inside strings?

Q - How can I send a Line-feed/Carriage-return/other-non-printable-characters? A - JSON supports several escape sequences for handling non-printable-characters (see above).

Q - Can I send UTF-8 characters? A - Yes you can, the API supports UTF-8 encoding.

Q - Can I send an emoji? A - Yes you can, either using the unicode escape sequence or the UTF-8 character.