SMS Reception Center: User's Guide

Overview

SMS Reception Center is a program that reads incoming short messages from a cellular phone and, for each message, executes the actions that you specified. Unlike other popular desktop SMS utilities, its main purpose is to handle incoming messages and send outgoing ones without any human intervention. Usually it's set up at the computer with a dedicated cellular phone or a GSM modem plugged in.

When you start SMS Reception Center, the first thing that you see is the editor. Now you can begin to write rules defining what will be done with incoming messages. When it's done you can save the rules to a file. When the rules are ready, you have to run the service that will actually connect to your phone (modem) and process messages. You can do it from the editor's menu.

The service is able to run in one of two modes:

• Desktop mode. It's running on the current user's desktop, and the service's icon is shown in the system tray. Some testing and debugging features are available in this mode only, so you'll certainly use it while tesing your ruleset.
  
• NT service mode. The service is running at the background and doesn't interact with the user's desktop; it remains running when you log off and can be set up to autostart before somebody logs in.

The main editor's window contains a list of rules that you have defined. You may create a new rule either with Edit->Insert in the main menu or with a context menu that will appear when you click on the list with the right mouse button. You may start editing an existing rule by double-clicking on the list element.

When a message arrives, the rules are applied in sequence. Each rule can use some predefined variables as parameters, and some rule types can define new variables. There may be a condition for each rule, determining when this rule is applied and when it's skipped.

The following actions are supported so far:

• Store message? adds a new line to the text file; you should specify a template for this line, using variable references where appropriate.
• Send message? sends out a new SMS or Winpopup message.
• Execute SQL query? runs SQL statement using an ODBC connection. The result of the query may be stored to variables.
• Run program? runs an executable file. You may use variable references in the executable file name as well as in other command-line parameters. You can define a variable that will contain the console program's output.
• Tweak variable? modifies the variable's value using an operation of your choice: replaces prefix, substring, or regular expression in the value.

When you begin to edit a rule, a dialog box appears where you can type in a rule's parameters. Some elements of this dialog box have context menu: when you click on such an element with the right mouse button, you can see the menu containing all the variables defined so far. The reference to the chosen variable (in the form of [%variable-name%]) is inserted into the field that you're editing. When this rule is used to process incoming message, all these references are replaced with current values of referenced variables. For each particular parameter, you can always know if variable references are allowed in it: if the appropriate dialog box element has a context menu, they are.

Common Elements of the Rule-Editing Dialogs

The layout of the rule editing dialog is specific for each rule type. However, some dialog elements are common for all types.

Description (entry)

Here you can specify the purpose of the rule in a few words. When you look at the main editor's window, you see the Description of each rule in the Information column (if the description is empty, this column is filled with action parameters).

This field doesn't affect message processing in any way, it's for your convenience only.

Condition (frame)

When a message arrives, the rule is applied to it only if the condition is true. There are two parts of a condition: a simple test (checking if the variable's value matches the pattern you give), and a complex test (checking if the logical expression, given in the C-like syntax, is true). The simple test's parameters are given in the upper part of the frame, and the compex test's expression is given in the lower one.

A few things to remember about Conditions:

• Any blank condition (test) is considered true. If you fill the simple test parameters and leave the complex test expression blank, then the whole condition's result will depend on the simple test. If you don't touch any field in the Condition frame at all, the rule is applied unconditionally.
• Simple test is considered blank (always true) if a variable's name is empty.

The simple test compares the variable with the pattern you give, using one of the following methods:

• If you select is exactly as an operation, the variable's value must be exactly the same as the pattern that you give.
  
• If you select is like, same as above, except that you can use some metacharacters in the pattern.
  • (star) matches any sequence of zero or more characters;
  • ? matches exactly one character;
  • [chars] matches any single character in chars.
• If you select contains, the variable's value must contain a substring that you give as pattern.
  
• If you select matches regexp, the pattern must be a regular expression, against which the variable's value will be matched.

The complex test evaluates the logical expression you give. The expression may contain the following elements:

• Variable references in the form of [%variable-name%] (you can insert a reference using the context menu);
• String literals surrounded by double quotes: “string”. Any occurrence of $, ", \, [, ] in string literals must be quoted with backslash;
• !=, == comparisons between variables and string literals;
• ( ) parentheses to denote subexpressions;
• ||, && logical operators;
• [regexp regexp string] is true if the string matches the regular expression. Both string and regexp may contain variable references.
• [string match pattern string] is true if the string matches the pattern, using the same pattern style as in “is like” simple test.

Take no further actions after this one is taken (checkbox)

If you enable this option for a rule, then if the rule's condition is true and all variables that it uses are defined, all rules following this one are ignored.