[asterisk-dev] GSoC 2010

[Chris Tooley]

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 4:59 PM, Russell Bryant <russell at digium.com> wrote:
> On 02/01/2010 04:56 PM, Mat Murdock wrote:
>> I wonder if we could make this more user friendly where you can add a
>> variable on each line and the returning xml would be returned into
>> variables named by their xml tags.  In the example below two variables
>> would be sent to a php page via post and the resulting page would be an
>> xml page with a tag named "age".  Anyway just an idea.
>>
>> exten =>  _X.,n,rest(test);
>> exten =>  _X.,n,Set (rest(test,first_name) ="John")
>> exten =>  _X.,n,Set (rest(test,last_name) ="Doe")
>> exten =>  _X.,n,rest_submit(test,http://somehost/controller/function.php)
>> exten =>  _X.,n,NoOp(${rest(test,age)})
>
> My problem with this type of feature is that so many other programming
> langauges already have this figured out, and we make it very easy to
> take advantage of that with AGI.  So, it's hard for me to swallow the
> maintenance burden.  There has just _got_ to be a point at which we say,
> sorry, the dialplan is not designed for that, you need a "real"
> programming language.
>

I have to say I completely agree. There are some things for which the
Dialplan is great, and then there are things that really should be
done in an AGI or EIVR application. The Dialplan should not be
complicated to the point of being unusable by trying to include every
possible feature and concept. Especially since, at some point, it
becomes maintaining a programming language of it's own and is outside
the scope of the project.

Just my 2 cents,

Chris Tooley