[Asterisk-Dev] PHP Web Interface helpers

[Alastair Maw]

Brian West wrote:
> Personally I don't like how this web interface works.

At first glance, I tend to agree. However, if you actually apply brain
before emitting knee-jerk reaction you will see that:

> 1. you have to have your configs world write and read.

No - they have to be read/write by the web server and readable by
Asterisk. So put asterisk user and web server user into a common group,
and that's that sorted. If you only want to change extension routing,
you could store it in a database, which doesn't really change much
regarding read permissions (web server needs access to a file with the
database username/password in, as does Asterisk), but makes things nicer
in other ways (see later).

> 2.  Its just as easy to use vi or pico.

Nonsense. You just can't expect your average office monkey to understand
how to navigate a linux filesystem using Bash, work out how to drive
pico/vim/emacs and edit configuration files that have a (to them)
obscure syntax with (as people persistent in pointing out) mediocre
documentation. Put a web gui in their bookmarks, and they don't need to
remember anything beyond a password to log in with.

> 3. BAD if you have security in mind.

GOOD if you have security in mind. This way you don't need to give
someone an account on your machine just to change where an extension
gets routed to. You also don't need to give them * command line
priviledges to be able to restart/reload *, along with all the power
that that gives you, and the possibilities for messing things up,
abusing it, etc., etc.

IMO, this is a Good Idea. Asterisk will be a lot more appealing to small
businesses if a secretary with no real experience beyond Word can handle
the day-to-day running and housekeeping stuff, without having to utter
what they see as cryptic incantations.

-- 
Alastair Maw <al.maw at mxtelecom.com>
MX Telecom - Systems Analyst
http://www.mxtelecom.com