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<h2><a href="https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Tips+and+Tricks">Tips and Tricks</a></h2>
<h4>Page <b>edited</b> by <a href="https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/~mnicholson">Matthew Nicholson</a>
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<h4>Changes (1)</h4>
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<tr><td class="diff-snipped" >...<br></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-unchanged" >h2. Creating Custom Aliases for Built-in Constructs <br> <br></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-changed-lines" >If you don't like the {{app}} table being named 'app' or if you think typing 'channel' to access the <span class="diff-changed-words">{{channel}<span class="diff-added-chars"style="background-color: #dfd;">}</span></span> table is too much work, you can rename them. <br></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-unchanged" > <br>{code:title=I prefer less typing} <br></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-snipped" >...<br></td></tr>
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</div> <h4>Full Content</h4>
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<h2><a name="TipsandTricks-LongRunningOperations%28Autoservcie%29"></a>Long Running Operations (Autoservcie)</h2>
<p>Before starting long running operations, an autoservice should be started using the <tt>autoservice_start()</tt> function. An autoservice will ensure that the user hears a continuous stream of audio while your lua code works in the background. This autoservice will automatically be stopped before executing applications and dialplan functions and will be restarted afterwards. The autoservice can be stopped using autoservice_stop() and the autoservice_status() function will return <tt>true</tt> if an autoservice is currently running.</p>
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<pre class="theme: Confluence; brush: java; gutter: false">app.startmusiconhold()
autoservice_start()
do_expensive_db_query()
autoservice_stop()
app.stopmusiconhold()</pre>
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<div class='panelMacro'><table class='infoMacro'><colgroup><col width='24'><col></colgroup><tr><td valign='top'><img src="/wiki/images/icons/emoticons/information.gif" width="16" height="16" align="absmiddle" alt="" border="0"></td><td>In Asterisk 1.10 an autoservice is automatically started for you by default.</td></tr></table></div>
<h2><a name="TipsandTricks-CreatingCustomAliasesforBuiltinConstructs"></a>Creating Custom Aliases for Built-in Constructs</h2>
<p>If you don't like the <tt>app</tt> table being named 'app' or if you think typing 'channel' to access the <tt>channel</tt> table is too much work, you can rename them.</p>
<div class="code panel" style="border-width: 1px;"><div class="codeHeader panelHeader" style="border-bottom-width: 1px;"><b>I prefer less typing</b></div><div class="codeContent panelContent">
<pre class="theme: Confluence; brush: java; gutter: false">function my_exten(context, extensions)
c = channel
a = app
c.my_variable = "my new channel variable"
a.dial("SIP/100")
end</pre>
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<h2><a name="TipsandTricks-RepurposingThe%7B%7Bprint%7D%7DFunction"></a>Re-purposing The <tt>print</tt> Function</h2>
<p>Lua has a built in "print" function that outputs things to stdout, but for Asterisk, we would rather have the output go in the verbose log. To do so, we could rewrite the <tt>print</tt> function as follows.</p>
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<pre class="theme: Confluence; brush: java; gutter: false">function print(...)
local msg = ""
for i=1,select('#', ...) do
if i == 1 then
msg = msg .. tostring(select(i, ...))
else
msg = msg .. "\t" .. tostring(select(i, ...))
end
app.verbose(msg)
end</pre>
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<h2><a name="TipsandTricks-SplittingConfigurationintoMultipleFiles"></a>Splitting Configuration into Multiple Files</h2>
<p>The <tt>require</tt> method can be used to load lua modules or additional files.</p>
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