Quickstart

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Most of Fonoster’s use cases require an account, the Command-line interface, and a virtual phone number. This guide will walk you through the steps to start with Fonoster quickly.

Request early access

To get started, you need to request early access to Fonoster. You can do this by visiting the GitHub Discussions and following the instructions.

Create a simple voice application

Voice applications in Fonoster require Node.js to run. If you don’t have Node.js installed, you can download it from the official website. Once you have Node.js installed, you can create a simple voice application by running the following commands:

mkdir voice-app
cd voice-app
npm init -y
npm install @fonoster/voice

Create a new script and add the following code:

index.js
  const VoiceServer = require("@fonoster/voice").default;

  new VoiceServer().listen(async (req, voice) => {
    await voice.answer();
    await voice.say("Hello from Fonoster!");
    await voice.hangup();
  });

Finally, run the application with the following command:

node index.js

Keep the application running for the next steps.

Publish your application

To make your application available to the public, you must expose it to the internet. One way to do this is by using a service like ngrok. You can install ngrok by running the following command:

npm install -g ngrok

Once you have ngrok installed, you can expose your application by running the following command:

ngrok tcp 50061

Your output should look like this:

This will give you a public endpoint that you can use to access your application.

Link a virtual phone number

Follow the next steps to link a virtual phone number to your application:

Fonoster CTL is a command-line tool that allows you to manage your Fonoster resources. You can create, update, and delete Fonoster resources like phone numbers, SIP trunks, etc.

You can install the tool using the following command:

npm install -g @fonoster/ctl

Check that the installation was successful by running the following command:

fonoster --version

If the installation was successful, you should see the version number of the command-line tool.

Before using the command-line tool, log in to a Workspace. You can do this by running the following command:

fonoster workspaces:login

This command will prompt you to enter your AccessKeyId and AccessKeySecret. Once you have entered this information, you will be logged in to your Workspace.

To create a new Application, you can use the following command:

fonoster applications:create

You will be asked to enter the Application’s name, speech information, and other details. Once you have entered this information, the Application will be created.

Your output should look like this:

To can list your existing applications with the following command:

fonoster applications:list

To link a Twilio phone number to your application, you can use the following command:

fonoster sipnet:numbers:linkTwilioNumber

You will be asked to enter an existing virtual phone number, the Twilio SID, and the Twilio Auth Token. Once you have entered this information, the Twilio phone number will be linked to your application.

To confirm that the phone number was linked successfully, you can run the following command:

fonoster sipnet:numbers:list

You can now call the Twilio phone number to access your voice application.

Twilio is used as an example. You can use other SIP providers as well.

You can use the command-line tool or the SDK to make an outbound call. To make an outbound call, first, you need the reference of the application you created. You can get the reference by running the following command:

fonoster applications:list

Once you have the reference, you can use the fonoster sipnet:calls:create command to make an outbound call. Here is an example:

fonoster sipnet:calls:create --app-ref 4b01c9b1-8cb1-48fb-bd49-f3daf13463a9 \
 --from +18456134823 \
 --to +17853134923

You can also use the SDK to make an outbound call. To do this, you can use the following code:

call.js
const SDK = require("@fonoster/sdk");

# Replace with your Workspace Access Key Id
const client = SDK.Client({ accessKeyId: "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" });

client.loginWithApiKey("AP0eerv2g7qow3e950k7twu4rvydcunq3k", "fNc...")
  .then(async() => {
    const calls = new SDK.Calls(client);

    const response = await calls.createCall({
      from: "+18456134823",
      to: "+17853134923",
      appRef: "4b01c9b1-8cb1-48fb-bd49-f3daf13463a9"
    })

    console.log(response);
  });

Replace the example values with the appropriate ones.

Now that you have created your first Application learn more about Fonoster’s advanced features and concepts.

Programmable Voice

Learn more about the Programmable Voice API and how to build advanced voice applications.

SDKs

Learn how to use the Node.js and Web SDKs to interact with Fonoster programmatically.

Get Started

Concepts

Guides

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Programmable Voice

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