the hard way to get SMS messages in app

My epiphany today was that SMS would be the easiest way to capture expenses like gas and groceries. That's funny, seriously. I decided to see how difficult it would be to get SMS messages into an app. Since I recently set up a Skype account with SkypeIn, I figured I'd see if SkypeIn could accept SMS. In short, it doesn't appear to (still).

The Skype APIs are brilliantly trivial so within a couple minutes of downloading the Python version of the API I had this script running to send my real phone a test SMS message.

import Skype4Py

def OnAttach(status):
  print 'API attachment status: ' + skype.Convert.AttachmentStatusToText(status)

  if status == Skype4Py.apiAttachAvailable:
    skype.Attach()

skype = Skype4Py.Skype()
skype.OnAttachmentStatus = OnAttach

print 'Connecting to Skype...'
skype.Attach()

message = skype.CreateSms(Skype4Py.smsMessageTypeOutgoing, '+15555551234')
message.Body = "Hello from sendSms.py"
message.Send()

That works - I set a real phone number where the 5555551234 is and the real phone gets the SMS instantly. Since I was sure the API was functioning correctly, I tried reading SMS messages. I could see SMS messages so from a real phone I sent an SMS to my SkypeIn number.

Neither Skype (the GUI client) nor the API could see the incoming SMS so I did a little reading and found that landlines are used for SkypeIn so incoming SMS is not an option. I read that there is a company that provides free SMS routing to Skype accounts. The format is 'skype account name message'. Skype then receives the SMS as an Instant Message. I tried it out by sending 'skype mrtidy test another from iPhone' and did get the Instant Message.

import Skype4Py

skype = Skype4Py.Skype()
skype.Attach()

for sms in skype.Smss:
  print sms.Type + ' SMS: ' + sms.Body

for chat in skype.Chats:
  print chat.Type + ' Chat'
  for message in chat.Messages:
    print 'Message: ' + message.Body

Using the code above, I can now see that I have received the SMS message:

OUTGOING SMS: short message from python
OUTGOING SMS: Hello from sendSms.py
OUTGOING SMS: 
OUTGOING SMS: test with the 1 in it
OUTGOING SMS: 
OUTGOING SMS: testing sms from skype
DIALOG Chat
Message: "test another from iPhone [ SMS to Skype message from +15555551234 ]"
Message: 
Message: 
MULTICHAT Chat

I'm pretty bummed about SkypeIn being landline and having no real option for receiving SMS. I thought about my fundamental problem and I could set up a private twitter account specifically for tracking the expenses that we make while out but I'd really prefer SMS or email. The SMS attraction was that it is just 2 fields which makes sense; email has a subject field which is unnecessary for this task.