[Freeswitch-dev] Chat Dialplan

[Kurtis Heimerl]

I forgot to disable digest mode, and so I have 5 emails to respond to
in 2 received mails. Instead, I'm going to address the highlights
here:

Steven Ayre <steveayre at gmail.com> said:
"Have you thought of making it a patch to add a new API interface so
that modules can register chat dialplans, similar to how
mod_dialplan_xml works?

-Steve"

I don't quite understand what you're saying here. Individual modules
(e.g., Sofia) would register a different dialplan? Is that how it
currently works? I thought, if they selected an XML dialplan in the
conf, they all used the same one. I'm obviously confused, so please
explain in more depth!

"Abdul Hakeem" <alhakeem at gmail.com> said:
"Kurtis,
Which protocol will this chat/sms dialplan be compliant with ?.
Sip MESSAGE method , SIMPLE and XMPP are both widely adopted.
It would be great to add support for connectivity to external domains such as
Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger etc.
Cheers,
AH"

So far as my current architectural vision, any module implementing a
MESSAGE event should be able to trigger a dialplan action. My plan is
to start with Sofia, so it would support SIMPLE. Others should be
pretty easy as well.

Lastly,
Anthony Minessale <anthony.minessale at gmail.com> said:
"This sounds redundant and intrusive.
We already have a concept of namespace within the chat username which
is used for routing.

we prefix the namespace into the user id such as conf+1234 at domain.com
This allows conference to get messages from sip, xmpp or any other
protocol that supports chat.

When a from user on chat contains +:

each module just parses the inbound chat message, cuts off the proto
"everything up to the first +" in this case conf
and routes it to the module registered to that namespace.

Right now conference will advertise it's presence and receive chat of
the word list and respond with the list despite the protocol used, eg
sip, jabber etc.

Also chat messages are routed to individual calls when they are
associated with an active channel allowing you to use chat inside IVR.

I recommend trying to understand all of this before proposing drastic
changes that will regress all of this functionality."

I need a programmatic layer for routing messages. What's currently in
FS is (seemingly) unable to do this. I'm aware that the current system
routes messages to users correctly; I don't think it enables any sort
of interesting programmatic access. For instance, building a system
that receives a message and immediately starts a call is not something
I think can be currently done. The dialplan abstraction is
well-understood by FS users, and an extension I think could provide a
lot of value.

I don't think these changes will regress any functionality either. I
proposed adding a configuration flag that switched between behaviors,
so that existing functionality won't be modified. Lastly, sending this
email was part of me trying to understand the current system. Thanks
for the direction.

If I'm wrong, and there's a simple way to provide programmatic access,
I'd love to hear about it. That's a lot less work for me!

On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 4:49 PM, Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl at cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Hello Freeswitch-dev!
>
> I've recently begin modifying Sofia to support a chat "dialplan", very
> similar to the voice dialplan. Basically, a chat/sms will come in at a
> certain number/address and be routed via the dialplan. My current plan
> for doing this is as follows:
>
> 1) Add message events to sofia: I want sofia (and eventually all chat
> clients) to send message events through FS's event framework when an
> event arrives.
> 2) Remove message routing from Sofia: Sofia should not be routing
> messages itself. Instead, it should just generate the event saying a
> message has arrived and someone else should do the routing (namely my
> dialplan)
> 3) Implement a simple chat dialplan module that listens for message
> events and routes them according to an XML dialplan.
>
> I have some questions for the FS developer community.
>
> First, building my own module is conceptually simple. Modifying Sofia
> is not. What's the best way to go about making these changes? I could
> submit extension tickets (e.g., a configuration variable that adds
> messages and one that removes routing), or submit patches, or both. I
> think this could be broadly useful, and I want to try to contribute to
> the community.
>
> Secondly,  I'm having a little difficulty finding the place where
> messages are routed in sofia. That's probably the place to insert both
> 1 & 2. Any pointers would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks!
>