How do I add a line break in my Twilio SMS message?

Question

Using Java/Scala. I am sending this string (an sms message) to a user mobile number by a Twilio Account.

var body = "Hello from Govind Singh Nagarkoti! Your verification code is " + code

This goes out to the user mobile, in 1 line.

I want a newline after the first sentence. I want the user to receive:

"Hello from Govind Singh Nagarkoti!
 Your verification code is 240190"

How can I enter a line break?

Hey! Twilio employee here. Have you tried writing a multiline string with a return carriage in it? That works for me (in Python). — phalt, Jun 18 '14 at 09:56

alphaleonis · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-08T23:57:13.517

32

If you are using an official Twilio library, the proper syntax is \n.

In your case, this should work:

var body = "Hello from Govind Singh Nagarkoti! \n Your verification code is " + code

edited May 08 '16 at 23:57

answered Feb 19 '16 at 23:51

alphaleonis

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score 12 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 27 '16 at 18:18

12

Just a tip to anyone else who tries to use \n to take the content to a new line: the "\n" has to be within double quotes; if it's contained within single quotes it will print out as '\n'.

edited Dec 27 '16 at 18:18

user7291698

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answered Dec 27 '16 at 17:37

Samar Gurjar

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score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 14 '14 at 10:34

8

Use %0a , it might be helpful.

Reference :http://www.twilio.com/help/faq/sms/how-do-i-add-a-line-break-in-my-sms-message

answered Jun 14 '14 at 10:34

Amar

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user getting as it is message with %0a – Govind Singh Jun 14 '14 at 10:45
As far I understood curl -X is a command line client tool for URL manipulations,it meant making a call to the REST API given with the sets of data.U might try with \n once – Amar Jun 14 '14 at 10:54

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered May 09 '16 at 01:01

You can either use \n with single quotes

val body = s"Hello from Govind Singh Nagarkoti!\nYour verification code is $code"

or a new line with triple quotes:

var body = s"""Hello from Govind Singh Nagarkoti! 
Your verification code is $code"""

Note that I also used string interpolation here by prefixing the variable with $ and prefixing the string with s.

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 29 '19 at 11:02

Make sure your IDE doesn't automatcally add another \ if you copy pasted "\n". This is what tripped me. I pasted "\n" and it got inserted as "\\n" so naturaly the first "\" made the second "\" the special character and resulted in the "n" being treated as a simple "n" character. Hope this helps.

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 14 '14 at 12:30

1

\n works , and i was trying for, %0a

var body = "Hello from Govind Singh Nagarkoti!\n Your verification code is " + code

answered Jun 14 '14 at 12:30

Govind Singh

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score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 27 '21 at 08:49

If anyone is struggling with this in Node.js specifically maybe this will help.

I tried all of the above and nothing worked. In my case the notification.msgText was coming from a database and the \n were in the string returned from the db. Nothing I tried worked, until I did the following. I used the | as a placeholder in the database, and then replaced it on the call to twillio. Hopefully this might save you from pulling out a hair or two.

const rsp = await twilioClient.messages
    .create({
        body: notification.msgText.replace(/\|/g, "\n"),
        from: twilioFromNum,
        to: `+1${notification.cellPhone}`
});

How do I add a line break in my Twilio SMS message?

7 Answers7