Twiliomenu

If you've spent any time with Twilio, you know that you can end up with a lot of controller actions. A lot of logic ends up in the controller, which isn't a recipe for DRY or maintainable code.

This gem allows you to move most of your Twilio code into your model rather than a mess of controller actions.

For Example

Some of your twilio controllers might look like this:

class CallController < ActionController::Base
  def handler
    # If the user has pressed digits on their keypad,
    # process them.
    if params[:Digits]
      if params[:Digits] == 1
        response = Twilio::Builder do |r|
          r.redirect second_menu_path
        end
      elseif params[:Digits] == 2
        response = Twilio::Builder do |r|
          r.redirect third_menu_path
        end
      end
    
    # Otherwise, display the first menu
    else  
      response = Twilio::Builder do |r|
        r.play "/path-to-sound.mp3"
        r.say "This is the handler menu."
        r.gather do
          r.say "Press 1 to go to the second menu"
          r.say "Press 2 to go to the third menu"
        end
      end
    end
    
    render text: response
  end
  
  def second_menu
    # Second menu code would go here ...
  end
  
  def third_menu
    # More code here ...
  end
end

Ick. This design results in a lot logic residing in your controllers, and as the controller grows, it will difficult to follow.

Here's how we'd refactor this code with twiliomenu.

Install the gem

gem install twiliomenu

Or inside your Gemfile:

gem "twiliomenu"

Then run bundle install to install it.

Call Model

First, generate your model.

rails g model Call current_menu

Note that you need to add a string field named "current_menu" to any model you wish to use this gem with. Now, inside our call_model.rb we can write:

class Call < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_menu # Pulls in the gem functionality
  
  menu :opening_menu do
  	play "/path-to-sound.mp3"
  	say "This is the handler menu."
  	gather do
  	  prompt 1, "Press 1 to go to the second menu", menu: :second_menu
  	  prompt 2, "Press 2 to go to the third menu", menu: :third_menu
  	end
  end
  
  menu :second_menu do
    # Code for the second menu here ...
  end
  
  menu :third_menu do
    # Code for the third menu here ...
  end
end

And then we can slim down our controller!

class CallController < ActiveController::Base
  def handler
    @call = (params[:id]) ? Call.find(params[:id]) : Call.create
    @call.process_twilio_response(params)
    render text: @call.twiml
  end
end