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Asked: 2026-05-22T03:22:29+00:00

I’m building an application that takes inputs from SMS text thru Twilio. I’d like

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I’m building an application that takes inputs from SMS text thru Twilio. I’d like to build a table the matches the incoming SMS body with the appropriate response.

For example, imagine I’m building an NFL text message thing.

Someone texts in ‘Redskins’ and we text back, “The Redskins play at FedEx field”
Someone texts in ‘Colts’ and we text back, “The Colts are the pride of Indiana.”

Here’s the tricky part:

Of course, our Rails app is going to need to interpret the incoming team names through Regular Expressions, as many people will text in: Redskins or REDSKINS or REDSKIN or Redskin or REDskin…..

With one or two teams, one could just hardcode the RegExp and response into the controller…but with 30 teams, that seems wrong. (And with 120 entries — say all pro sports– even worse).

Does any one have any tips on getting the team names from the input stage, thru the DB table stage with a ‘RegExp’ conversion in the middle?

Thanks in advance.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    for a modest number of keywords, I recommend a two table approach with Keywords and Aliases, always stores in lower case. Convert input to lower case. For each Keyword (say, redskins) you manually add 5-10 variations (including the correct one) in Aliases all of which have Alias.keyword_id = the id of the keyword. So you simply search Alias for the user input, and if you find a match you have the keyword_id of the keyword.

    It has two advantages: fast and easy to extend… i fyou log the “no matches” you’ll get a list of new aliases to add once to the dbase. MUCH easier and more reliable than trying to do via regex.

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