Short Message Service (SMS) is an important means of communication. According to Wikipedia, more than 7 trillion SMS messages were sent in 2011. To prevent SMS spamming, service providers have placed a maximum limit of 10 recipients on any given message. As the technology evolved, the ability to send SMS messages through a web service provider has made sending messages programmatically more efficient. However, using a web service provider makes receiving responses awkward, at best. To compensate, this project attempts to create a client side Android application that would automate sending an SMS message, to more than 10 recipients, through a smart phone’s SMS application. The major advantages of this application are automation for the sender, to more than 10 recipients. In addition, this application provides the recipient, the ability to easily respond, directly to the sender’s phone.
The Android application is built on the Android API version 2.3.3 or API 10, because this API services nearly 80% of current devices on the market. The application uses an Open Source API called JExcel, to connect to an Excel document and obtain data from the first two columns, of the first sheet of a workbook stored on the device’s “/data/” folder. It then runs through a loop to send an SMS message to each recipient listed in the Excel document. Overview of the system begins with a simple splash screen asks the user for a file name and a message. The message is limited to a 160 characters, and anything over is truncated. After supplying the file name and message, the user has two options, either send the message or exit the program. Once the send message button is pressed, the program begins to parse the Excel data, store it in an array, then call the SMS application to send each message individually.
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