You can check if you already have Node.js installed on your machine by opening up a terminal and running the following:

This will include installing npm on a Mac and getting the environment ready for a Twilio project. We’ll then take you through the basics of setting up Node.js for use with Twilio on a Mac. We’ll review a few tricks and tools when working with environment variables in Node.js in this blog.įirst things first, we need to ensure that we have a Node.js environment. So while hosts will set a PORT variable that specifies on which port the server should listen to, modules might have different behaviors (like logging) depending on the value of the NODE_ENV variable. This opens up an array of ways to configure different aspects of your Node.js application. So if you wanted to send an SMS, for example, you’ll need to install Node.js and the Twilio Node.js module.Īnother great feature of the Node.js language (and its modules) is that it has a neat way of working with environment variables, which many cloud hosts (such as Heroku, Azure, AWS, Now.sh, etc.) use. The reason for this is due to its event-driven, nonblocking input/output structure.Ĭombining it with Twilio makes building awesome telephony apps really easy. While still very young, Node.js has shown itself to be fast, highly-scalable, and efficient. Node.js is one of the most talked about frameworks in the web development community since Rails. The basics of environment variables in Node.js

With just a few lines of code, you can simply run a Node.js application straight from the terminal and use Twilio to send and receive text messages with Twilio Programmable SMS.

Run node js on mac