[asterisk-app-dev] Implementation of ChanSpy functionality in ARI

[BJ Weschke]

  +1

  Having this layer of granularity also makes it much easier to answer 
questions like "How come ARI?  What's wrong with AMI/AGI ?"

On 11/1/13, 9:15 AM, Joshua Colp wrote:
> Matthew Jordan wrote:
>> I'm not entirely sure of this approach.
>>
>> On the one hand, having a nice, clean virtual channel driver that has
>> this explicit purpose is a nice convenience - it is certainly easier to
>> manipulate than a Local channel (both halves).
>>
>> On the other hand, it feels like it limits the usage of /snoop a bit,
>> and makes it a bit more complicated to construct some scenarios. For
>> example, if I want a SIP channel to spy on another SIP channel, I 
>> have to:
>>
>> (1) Make a bridge
>> (2) Put my SIP channel in it
>> (3) Call /snoop on the channel I want to spy on
>> (4) Take the Snoop channel and put it in the bridge
>
> That's an application. The act of spying on another channel is an 
> application, that's what I'm trying to avoid because it limits things 
> (take for example all of the gotchas you put in your description) and 
> also means we now have to continue to add features to this operation. 
> By providing the snoop as a media conduit primitive we give more 
> control. That does come at the cost of having to do the above.
>
>> That's not onerous, but it is a bit more complicated than having /snoop
>> be an operation on any channel.
>
> Well, it'll be an operation on any channel - it just won't take 
> another channel as an argument and connect them together for spying. ^_^
>
>> I do worry as well that a specific channel driver may have its own rules
>> that have to be followed via ARI. The lifetime of a Snoop channel would
>> have to be defined carefully as well - once the channel it is hooked
>> onto is disposed of, you'd almost certainly have to dispose of the Snoop
>> channel automatically as well - you don't really "control" the end of
>> the Snoop channel that was hooked onto the real channel.
>
> Correct, when the hooks that snoop uses are terminated then it would 
> hangup. If you want to stop snooping, then you hangup the snoop 
> channel yourself.
>
>> I wonder if we're not providing another convenience mechanism similar to
>> /dial - only this time in the form of a specific channel driver.
>
> I would say the original approach is the convenience mechanism.
>