Page 273 - Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony

CHAPTER 11

The Asterisk GUI Framework

…I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others
were making ships.
—Charles Simic

This chapter introduces the components that comprise the GUI and help it work with
Asterisk. It describes the installation of the web server and the GUI components for
those who are not using the AsteriskNOW distribution. It also shows you how to
modify the GUI to suit your purposes. Technical information is also provided so that
developers wishing to create their own GUI or application can utilize the web server
and GUI components. We’d like to thank the folks at Digium for writing this chapter,
especially the code examples, which they developed and tested.

Why a GUI for Asterisk?

Since the beginning, Asterisk has been a phone system for the brave. In the early days
it took guts and more than a bit of tenacity to make Asterisk do your bidding. Those
willing to accept the learning curve, wade into the config files, and fight for their calls
were rewarded with a powerful, flexible phone system (as well as a very marketable
skill set). However, the mass market was not, and is not, ready to script extensions,
manage peers, and handle the other tasks that are the crux of Asterisk administration.
Since the early pre-1.0 days, people have tried to tame the mighty Asterisk with config
file generators tied to databases and managed via a range of graphical user interfaces
(GUIs). The most successful of these did a fine job of creating an Asterisk-based ap-
plication, but none of them provided the full flexibility that the raw scripting environ-
ment offers. By replacing the digital haiku of the dialplan with a limited list of options,
the resulting system is reduced from Asterisk to an Asterisk-based system. Not a bad
thing, but not the whole enchilada. *

* In fact, two of the authors of this book once attempted to write the ultimate Asterisk GUI. Lucky for you,
they abandoned the project and began writing Asterisk documentation instead!

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