Getting daily SMS alerts about COVID-19 using Node.js and Twilio

Visiting a web page daily for COVID-19 data is a tedious task especially if you are a lazy programmer like me😄. In order to solve this problem, I have created a notification system that sends me data about worldwide Coronavirus cases daily at a specified time.

In this tutorial, I'm going to show this how you can make your own system like this one.

Setting up Twilio account

In order to send a message, you need Twilio credentials. Go to Twilio console and get the Twilio number which we will use to send SMS using API.

From your dashboard, you need your ACCOUNT SID, AUTH TOKEN, and TRIAL NUMBER, copy them and save them in a .env file in your project's root directory. It should look something like below

ACC_SID='your-account-sid'
AUTH_TOKEN='your-auth-token'

FROM='your-twilio-number'

# Also add your number here (recommended)
TO='your-number'

Sending a message

Now we need to install Twilio package for node.js

npm install twilio

Now let's test our credentials by sending a message.

const accountSid = process.env.ACC_SID;
const authToken = process.env.AUTH_TOKEN;

const twilio = require("twilio");
const client = new twilio(accountSid, authToken);

client.messages
    .create({
      body: "Hello World!",
      to: process.env.TO,
      from: process.env.FROM
    })
    .then(message => console.log(message.sid));

Now run the file using

node index

If all goes well you'll receive an SMS with the text "Hello World!"🙌

Getting COVID-19 data

We will use this API to get the latest data about COVID-19.

To get the data in Node.js we will use the request library since I found it quite user-friendly.

npm install request

To send data in the SMS

request(
    "https://covidapi.info/api/v1/global",
    { json: true },
    (err, res, body) => {
      if (err) {
        return console.log(err);
      }

      var result = body.result;
     
      // Format message
      var msg = `\n Coronavirus Stats (IND): 
                \nConfirmed: ${result.confirmed}
                \nDeaths: ${result.deaths}
                \nRecovered: ${result.recovered}
            `;

      sendNotification(msg);
    }
  );


// Send message
function sendNotification(msg) {
  client.messages
    .create({
      body: msg,
      to: process.env.TO,
      from: process.env.FROM
    })
    .then(message => console.log(message.sid));
}

Setting up a cronjob

in order to set up a cronjob in Node.js, we can use a library called node-cron

npm install node-cron

Now we have to run the above code every day at 8:00 AM (say). Wrap the above code to send SMS every day at 8 AM with the latest data.

cron.schedule("0 8 * * *", () => {
  request(
    "https://covidapi.info/api/v1/global",
    { json: true },
    ...
    ...

});

Bonus

Let's also add a reminder to wash our hands every two hours. We can add another cronjob to send SMS

// Cron job to send message every 2 hour from 8-23 daily
cron.schedule("0 9-23/2 * * *", () => {
  sendNotification("Its time to wash your hands 🖐");
});

Here is the GitHub repository where you can find all the code. Also, give it a star⭐ if you like.🤗