[Asterisk-Users] Changes to manager outputs - A discussion

[Asterisk]

I am currently writing a prototype agent monitoring system, which (as 
most others in question) simply monitors the output from the event 
system, and displays the relevant information. I would hope to donate 
this back to the community once it works properly :)

However, I feel that it would be more useful for the manager output to 
be tab delimited, one record per line:

i.e. instead of

Event: Agents
Agent: 6038
Name: A User
Status: AGENT_LOGGEDOFF
LoggedInChan: n/a
LoggedInTime: 0
TalkingTo: n/a

Event: Agents
Agent: 6039
Name: An Other
Status: AGENT_LOGGEDOFF
LoggedInChan: n/a
LoggedInTime: 0
TalkingTo: n/a

I would prefer to see the following format:

Event~tAgents~t1~t6038~tA User~tAGENT_LOGGEDOFF~tn/a~t0~tn/a
Event~tAgents~t1~t6039~tAn Other~tAGENT_LOGGEDOFF~tn/a~t0~tn/a

Where ~t is a tab character, and the layout starts
Type~tName~tVersion~tData

Version is the version number of the data layout for the Agents Event. 
For version 1 we have

AgentNum/Name/Status/LoggedinChan/LoggedinTime/Talkingto

This allows us to add further fields to the record as and when required 
and not break any existing code in the field.

In my mind, (yes, a small one compared to the giants walking around 
here) There are several advantages in this method:

a) Parsing one line of data per record is in order of magnitude easier 
to code.

b) As mentioned, further fields can be added at any time without 
breaking code

c) output can be exported directly into spreadsheets

d) It is very easy to skip records that you are not interested in - If 
field 2 is not "Agents" then ignore

In order not to break existing code, we could provide a flag or setting 
to determine which output format to use: further more we could slowly 
update all of the manager events until they are all available in old and 
new formats.

I know that perhaps I've talked a load of BS - I would appreciate it if 
people could comment on this before I head up a blind alley. I feel that 
it would be more useful and easier for us as developers if there were a 
common event manager layout, rather than a fixed number of lines per 
action type / event type, and one that follows a more common data / 
record layout.

Please feel free to comment / flame whatever.

exten => 999,n,GetFlameSuit(MaxStrength)
exten => 999,n,WearFlameSuit(MaxStrength)
exten => 999,n,HoldBreathAndWaitToBeFlamedBigTime()

Julian.