How do I send an SMS via the Twilio API (using HTTP POST in server-side javascript ) that includes accent characters (for instance ö)? - twilio

Question

I'm trying to send an SMS via Twilio's API using an HTTP POST request that is called via server-side javascript in salesforce marketing cloud.
I can successfully send an SMS, the only problem is that accent characters (for instance ö, ü, à, è) are being omitted. So for instance if I send an SMS that should say "Dein persönlicher Rabatt", when I received the SMS, it says "Dein persnlicher Rabatt".
Here is my server-side javascript code:
`<script type="text/javascript" runat="server">
Platform.Load("core", "1");
var accountSid = [accountSid];
var authToken = [authToken];
var auth = Base64Encode(accountSid + ":" + authToken);
var phoneDE = DataExtension.Init("[Data Extension external key]");
var numbers = phoneDE.Rows.Retrieve();
var end = numbers.length;
for (var i=0; i<end; i++) {
var config = {
endpoint: "https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/[accountSid]/Messages.json",
contentType: "application/x-www-form-urlencoded",
payload : "From=[phone]&To=" + numbers[i]["Phone"] + "&Body=Your cöntract is expiring today, you can sign it here: " + numbers[i]["URL"]
};
Write("Payload" + i + ": " + config.payload + " ");
try {
var httpResult = HTTP.Post(
config.endpoint,
config.contentType,
config.payload,
["Authorization"],
["Basic " + auth]
);
var result = Platform.Function.ParseJSON(httpResult.response);
Write(httpResult.StatusCode);
Write("result" + result);
} catch(error) {
Write("Error: " + Stringify(error));
}
}
</script>`
What do I need to do to ensure that my SMS includes the accent characters and that they are not omitted?
Thank you very much for your help.

Answer 1

Thanks for your answer Swimburger. I didn't get a chance to try it as I found another solution. However I do appreciate your feedback, your solution was the next approach I was going to try.
My solution was to modify the contentType of the POST request to include UTF-8 as the character set:
contentType: "application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8"

Answer 2

Unfortunately, I don't have access to a Salesforce environment to try out your code, but here's a modified version of your code using node.js.
var accountSid = process.env.TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID;
var authToken = process.env.TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN;
var auth = Buffer.from(`${accountSid}:${authToken}`).toString('base64');
var body = new URLSearchParams();
body.append("From", "[phone]");
body.append("To", "[phone]");
body.append("Body", "ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿĀāĂ㥹");
const request = new Request(
`https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/${accountSid}/Messages.json`,
{
method: 'POST',
body: body.toString(),
headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
'Authorization': `Basic ${auth}`
}
}
);
fetch(request)
.then(response => response.json())
.then(jsonBody => console.log(jsonBody))
.catch((error) => {
console.error(error);
});
You need to configure the Twilio Account SID and Auth Token as env variables.
After that, running this script sends an SMS and the SMS contains all the characters.
I'm not sure if you are able to use these node.js APIs, but if you don't, this proves that the issue is caused by Salesforce's Server Side JavaScript APIs.
HTTP.Post probably removes the ö character.
If you do have access to node.js/npm packages, you could also use the Twilio helper library for Node.js.