How to execute a shell_exec command from the cloud to my localhost

Question

i am making a SMS sending website and im using Gammu as my local sms gateway, it is working fine in my localhost base on the php code i am using which is:

echo shell_exec('"C:\Gammu\bin\gammu.exe" --sendsms TEXT +'.$row["mobilenum"].' -text '.$message.'');

Now how i can execute this when i start putting the website on the cloud? I am using a window based for my SMS server.

Is there other way i can link the cloud and the localhost to just execute the gammu command?

Answer 1

Calling shell_exec() to gammu.exe on a cloud server won'r work as you don't have the phone connection.

Instead of calling shell_exec() from your cloud hosted website, you will need to make a request via HTTP to a service which can do this.

The easiest would be to use something like Twillio.com

Or, you can also expose a simple HTTP API on your local network that is accesible for the cloud server to POST to.

You would need a static IP on your local Gammu server, and the corresponding port opened in the firewall.

So for example:

POST http://100.22.33.11/sms?number=82736164617&text=Hello%20World

or in JS

$.post('http://100.22.33.11/sms',{
  number: '82736164617',
  text: 'Hello World'
})

Of course, you would also want to add some authentication (over SSL), to avoid being an open SMS proxy :)