Phone auth with Telesign

Telesign is a digital identity and communications platform. Its APIs send SMS and voice messages and verify phone numbers, and its portal manages your customer ID, API keys, and sender numbers.

How does the integration work?

If you self-host Appwrite, you can use Telesign to deliver the one-time passwords (OTPs) that Appwrite Auth sends by SMS. Appwrite uses the provider you configure for phone (SMS) login, phone number verification, SMS challenges for multi-factor authentication, and team invitations sent to a phone number.

Phone authentication lets users sign in without a password, which suits mobile apps where users already have their phone at hand.

How to implement

To implement the Telesign provider for phone authentication, there are several steps you must complete:

Step 1: Set up Telesign

First, sign up for a Telesign account and open the Telesign portal. Save the following information for later use:

Telesign's guide to finding your customer ID and API key walks through the portal.

Step 2: Add Telesign to your Appwrite instance

For this step, you must self-host Appwrite if you haven't already.

Open the .env file of your Appwrite installation and update the following environment variables:

_APP_SMS_PROVIDER=sms://<CUSTOMER_ID>:<API_KEY>@telesign
_APP_SMS_FROM=<TELESIGN_PHONE_NUMBER>

Write the phone number with a leading + and the country code, such as +14155550123. If your API key contains characters such as /, +, or =, URL-encode it before you add it to _APP_SMS_PROVIDER. Appwrite only turns on SMS delivery when both variables are set.

Then recreate your Appwrite stack and confirm the variables were applied:

docker compose up -d
docker compose exec appwrite vars

Step 3: Test the provider

To test the provider, implement phone (SMS) login in a web or mobile app. Request a code for your phone number, then create a session with the code you receive:

import { Client, Account, ID } from "appwrite";

const client = new Client()
    .setEndpoint('https://<APPWRITE_DOMAIN>/v1')
    .setProject('<PROJECT_ID>');

const account = new Account(client);

const token = await account.createPhoneToken({
    userId: ID.unique(),
    phone: '+14255550123'
});

const session = await account.createSession({
    userId: token.userId,
    secret: '<SECRET>'
});

After you sign in, the user appears on the Auth page of your project with their phone number as the identifier.

Read more about Telesign and Appwrite Auth

If you would like to learn more about phone authentication with Telesign and Appwrite Auth, we have some resources that you should visit: