[asterisk-dev] Is externalivr really ready for "real" usage?

[Paul Belanger]

On 12-02-10 01:14 AM, Steve Murphy wrote:
> I've been investigating turning an app I wrote into an externalIVR...
>
> and hitting some major roadblocks...
>
> For one, there is no stopstream action, for when you just want to cut off
> the playing without
> starting a new soundfile.... unless I guess, we start playing a silence
> file... is that the "approved tactic"?
>
> Nextly, I need to use ast_say_number, ast_say_digit_str,
> ast_say_character_str, and ast_say_phonetic_str,
> but this is not provided at all by app_externalivr.
>
> I'm looking to see if such capability could be added, but... not very
> easily, it appears...
> The ast_say_ functions pretty much use directly ast_streamfile and
> ast_waitstream directly to play the sounds
> as the algorithms determine the files.... they don't merely generate a list
> of files.
>
> To do that, it appears that every say routine in every language would have
> to have a "get a list of files" version.
> That strikes me as impractical.
>
> Might there be a way to turn off the play mech and use the say routines
> instead for this kind of request? Is that
> a possible alternative?
>
> Am I the only guy on earth to be trying out app_externalivr? You know, the
> mechanisms required to write a
> full-featured external app are not trivial. You need to create a thread to
> collect the events from asterisk,
> and then consume those in your main line. Some signalling from the input
> thread to the main thread
> is required. The simple examples provided by the literature are a far cry
> from what the specification says is needed.
> Anybody else working on this sort of thing?
>
I'm not sure about the only guy, but after somebody on our morning swdev 
call, a few weeks ago , mentioned using app_externalivr to rewriting 
something (I think it was app_queue). I too started looking into it.

I haven't actually written anything to use it yet but from what 
'googling' turned up, I couldn't find many examples of people using it. 
  I was planning on pinging asterisk-users to see if anybody has been 
using it but you beat me to is.

 From what I understand it has much potential, but seems there are some 
issues that you mentioned.

-- 
Paul Belanger
Digium, Inc. | Software Developer
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