[asterisk-dev] realtime on 1.6

[David A. Bandel]

Folks,

First, I'm not a C programmer.  That said, I can read the code I need
to and somewhat grep my way around, I just don't completely grok all
the code.

Hopefully, the chief programmer and head cat herder will be reading.

I've been putting together a very crude kludge to allow most anyone w/
a web browser to make realtime db changes.  After gathering all the
info I could easily find available I started on sip_conf, iax_conf,
and extensions_conf tables.

First, a couple of comments:
1.  none of the documentation I could find seemed to have a good grasp
on variables, acceptable values, and in particular the size of the
input values (and was actually contradictory when comparing various
blogs).
2.  all documentation I could find appears to be outdated (at least
for 1.6.0.beta9).

I would like to suggest a document to put all these variables in one
place and with all the requisite information about them (max size,
list of acceptable values). (For example, the SIP insecure variable
seemed to accept "yes, very, port, invite, port/invite", but very and
yes produced errors under 1.6 and I'm slightly unclear as to what port
and invite actually do.) My read of a few files looking for the
defines and traps proved little help.

I would also like to suggest comparing variables used in iax and sip
(as a minimum, but to incorporate all others as well) such that
variable names, sizes, acceptable values are similar.

In SIP and IAX, the name should be unique (or last to register wins,
so would be impossible to say where a call would go if one IAX and one
SIP phone had the same name).  In a SQL database, this is easy to
implement within a table, but how to do it between tables eludes me).
However, I'm not sure if variables are sufficiently compatible to use
just one table for all types of connections (SIP, IAX, MGCP, H323,
etc.).

I also ran into an error if I did not have "host=>dynamic" but a SIP
phone tried to register.

I am willing to help and write documentation (I'm considering writing
a book).  But thought I'd get some feedback (even if it's just "buzz
off"), perhaps some pointers (I RTFM when I can find the FM or
pertinent code file), or even better some discussion if any others
have ideas or noted any of the same issues.

While I find the configuration files acceptable for smaller
installations, even some of my schemes to organize things via
#includes gets a bit unwieldy (thankfully no one else has their
fingers in my pies).  But on larger installations, several, perhaps
some not so clueful folks, might have to pitch in (this thought is
enough to have me waking up in a cold sweat some nites).

I personally think Asterisk is super, but could use some help in the
config department (or I may just be lost in space).  At any rate, I'm
trying to finish my crude SIP/IAX/extensions web interface (Perl code
throwing an xhmtl page and talking to a PostgreSQL database).  It
ain't pretty, but it works (well, sort of -- gotta get around to
fixing the error traps).

Thanx for reading, looking forward to feedback,

David A. Bandel
-- 
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
 - Nemesis Air Racing Team motto