[asterisk-users] Large dial plans and variables

[Philipp Kempgen]

Doug Garstang wrote:

> I have a large dial plan here with over 3000 lines, and several dozen 
> macros. As it grew, it became apparent that there was some problems.
> 
> 1. When you pass arguments to a macro in the form of $ARG1, $ARG2 etc, 
> if that macro calls another macro, and passes arguments like this as 
> well, you lose the original values.
> 
> 2. When the macro's 'return' some value, it has to set a channel 
> variable. If your not careful, this quickly becomes a mess. Some 
> standard mechanism is needed.
> 
> In fact, the over all problem is that all channel variables are global 
> within that channel. Macro's don't have local variables and it makes 
> programming large dial plans problematic. Even things like loop counters 
> can get trashed when your inside of a loop, and you jump somewhere else 
> and modify that loop variable, and jump back.
> 
> Anyone got any tips on how to manage this? It would be awesome if AEL2 
> could address this somehow...

You're so right!

I thought about having just a catchall _. extension in the
dialplan and doing everything else in a "real" language via AGI -
PHP, Perl, ... whichever you like. It would make the programming
part much easier as the scope of variables is just as you
expect it to be.


Regards,
  Philipp

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