You are welcome, 

The script was meant to just show how you can obtain parameters from the command line and access it from your program. I do not have the SMS utilities so I could not simulate their functionality or test them from my box. I suppose the script below should work on yours. Invoke the program with the same arguments as before, just for the kicks. 

################# 
#################
import argparse 
import gammu 

def sms_en_masse(contacts, message): 
    # Configure Gammu
    sm = gammu.StateMachine()
    sm.ReadConfig()
    sm.Init()
    # Open the file with mobile phone contacts and read its contents
    with open(contacts, 'r' ) as phone_numbers:
        for cellphone in phone_numbers: # Read the data obtained line by line 
            message = {'Number': cellphone, 'Text': message, 'SMSC': {'Location': 1}}  
            try:
                sm.SendSMS(message)
            except Exception, exc:
                print 'Sending text to %s failed. Stack-trace: %s' % (number, exc)
            # print u'Number: %s - Text: %s'%(cellphone, message) 

if __name__ == "__main__": 
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Read in phone numbers from a text file and send a single SMS to all of them.')
    parser.add_argument('-f', '--file', type=str, nargs='+', help='Path to file with the cellphone numbers') 
    parser.add_argument('-m', '--message', type=str, help='A message to send to all receipents.')

    args = parser.parse_args() 

    sms_en_masse (args.file[0], args.message)

###########
########### 

Martin.

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 11:52 AM, Thuo Wilson <lixton@gmail.com> wrote:


On 26 June 2012 10:17, Martin Chiteri <martin.chiteri@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello again, 

I have conjured up some will power and come up with a sample solution: 

Supposing you have a simple text file named contacts.txt with the cellphone numbers you intend to SMS in the following format: 

#  contacts.txt 
#+++++++++++
#===========

# I have maintained the same name for the source files to the program to send texts in mass, 
### mass_sms.py 
## ============ 

import argparse 

def sms_en_masse(contacts_file, message): 
    numbers_list = [] # A list data type to hold cellphone numbers from a file 

    # Open the file with mobile phone contacts and read its content
    with open(contacts_file, 'r' ) as phone_numbers:
        for cellphone in phone_numbers: # Read the data obtained line by line 
            print u'Number: %s - Message: %s'%(cellphone, message) 
    

if __name__ == "__main__": 
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Read in phone numbers from a text file and send a single SMSs to all of them.")
    parser.add_argument('-f', '--file', type=str, nargs='+', help='Path of file with the cellphone numbers') 
    parser.add_argument('-m', '--message', type=str, help='A message to send to all receipents.')

    args = parser.parse_args() 

    sms_en_masse (args.file[0], args.message)

###### 

You can invoke the program from the command line in the following manner: 

$ python mass_sms.py -f contacts.txt -m 'Hello world.'  

Give the correct path to the file with the phone numbers, am assuming they are in the same folder with your Python script.  

N.B: You may also need to download and manually install argparse from the Python packaging index, or use setup tools / pip to get it automatically from PyPI. 

Martin.


Thanks Martin and Gisho and all others - The python script could read my file but not able to process the commands the way i wanted.... am not anywhere good in python - that could be the reason.

Meanwhile i had overlooked the power of awk and i finally found what i was looking for":

See below;

simple but to the point: Thats why i like bash scripting :)

#!/bin/sh
 for i in `awk -F ":" '{print $1}' contacts_file`; do
  echo `cat somemessage.txt`| /usr/bin/gammu --sendsms TEXT $i
done




On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 9:50 AM, Thuo Wilson <lixton@gmail.com> wrote:


On 26 June 2012 09:27, Martin Chiteri <martin.chiteri@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Wilson, 

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 5:14 PM, Thuo Wilson <lixton@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Python coders,

Analyze this;

#!/usr/bin/env python
# sample script to show how to same SMS to multiple recipients

import gammu
import sys

# Check parameters count
if len(sys.argv) < 3 or sys.argv[1] in ['--help', '-h', '-?']:
print 'Usage: mass-sms <TEXT> [number]...'
sys.exit(1)

# Configure Gammu
sm = gammu.StateMachine()
sm.ReadConfig()
sm.Init()

# Prepare SMS template
message = {'Text': sys.argv[1], 'SMSC': {'Location': 1}}         # HELP ME HERE

# Send SMS to all recipients on command line
for number in sys.argv[1:]:                                                         #and here i guess
 message['Number'] = number
 try:
 sm.SendSMS(message)
 except Exception, exc:
 print 'Sending to %s failed: %s' % (number, exc)

My issue is simple but not sure how to work on it;

I have some texts here;

/usr/bin/python mass-sms.py "we are smart people" `cat /root/numbers.txt`

I want to send the message "We are smart people" to the number in numbers.txt (some cellphone)

My problem is i can only read the first word "we" when i have sys.argv[1], which is OK, sys.argv[1:], i have anything later than and so on...


I think the problem is, as you have figured out, that the parameters collected from the command line are taken in as tuples and accessing them by indexes only gives a part of the string required and not the entire input. 

I will suggest you try out the package argparse for the job [ http://docs.python.org/dev/library/argparse.html ]. I have used it before and it is pretty easy to specify the data types of arguments expected from the user terminal (ints, floats, strings). I can try it out later on in the day and see if it will work with your problem.

Martin.
 

Thanks, looking forward.
 
How can i read a file using this and output texts like "we are smart people" to the above eg;

/usr/bin/python mass-sms.py `cat sometext` `cat /root/numbers.txt`

Hope am clear.

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