To send an SMS message via a menu driven interface, please see the help section titled “Web Menu Interface”. This section describes how to send a WAP Push programmatically via URL parameters.

WAP Push messages are specially formatted SMS messages that display an alert message to the user, and give the user the option of connecting directly to a particular URL via the mobile phone’s WAP browser.

For example, an e-mail application might send an alert that tells the user they have new e-mail, with a URL link to connect directly to a WAP e-mail application.

The WAP specifications define a format for applications to create XML-based “PAP” (Push Access Protocol) documents that can be posted to an operator’s “PPG” (Push Proxy Gateway), in order to deliver a WAP push message to a mobile device.

Unfortunately, the complexity of this format, and the reluctance of operators to open their “PPG” to just anyone, has made it difficult for developers to deploy “WAP Push” in their applications.

The Now SMS/MMS Gateway makes it easy to generate and deliver “WAP Push” messages. While the gateway does not support all of the options available via the PAP-based PPG interface, it does implement “WAP Push” in an elegantly simple solution.

To send a WAP Push message, use the following URL format:

http://127.0.0.1:8800/?PhoneNumber=xxxxxxxx&WAPURL=name.domain/path&Text=abc+def+ghi

For 127.0.0.1, please substitute the IP address or host name assigned to your gateway PC. (Note: 127.0.0.1 is a local loopback address that can be utilized when you are connecting to the gateway from the same computer.)

For 8800, please substitute the port number that the gateway is configured to use.

Substitute the phone number that you wish to send the SMS message to for the “xxxxxxxx” in the “PhoneNumber” parameter. Use either the local phone number format, or the international phone number format (your network provider may or may not allow you to send to international phone numbers). If the international phone number format is used, note that you must substitute “%2B” for the “+” character, because of URL escaping restrictions. For example, to send an SMS to +447778001210, use %2B447778001210 instead.

The alert text for the WAP Push message is contained in the “Text” parameter, and utilizes the same format as described in “Sending Text Messages”.

Note that there are two types of “WAP Push” messages, “Service Indication (SI)” and “Service Load (SL)”. The “SL” format can be selected by including “WAPSL=1” as a URL parameter, and does not support a “Text” parameter, while the “SI” format does. (By specification, the “SL” format was designed to tell the browser to connect to a URL without user intervention. However, for security reasons, mobile phones will always display a prompt before connecting to a URL. Therefore, the lack of a text parameter makes the “SL” format considerably less user-friendly than the “SI” format, and in practice, most users will exclusively use the “SI” format.)

The URL to be pushed to the mobile device is specified in the “WAPURL” parameter. Note that the “http://” portion of the URL is not necessary and is assumed. Also note that it may be necessary to escape some URL characters, please refer to the table in the “Sending Text Messages” section for common characters that must be escaped.