Page 285 - Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony

Prototype also makes it easy to make XMLHttp requests in an elegant manner. Using
Prototype’s Ajax object, the submitform() function can be rewritten as:
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
function submitform(){
var url = '/rawman';
var pars = 'username=' + escape($F('username')) + '&secret=' + escape($F('password'));

var myAjax = new Ajax.Request( url,
{ method: 'get',
parameters: pars,
onComplete: dosomething
});

}
</script>
Not only is this code much shorter, you don’t have to write browser-specific code in
your web pages; Prototype takes care of the differences between Mozilla/Firefox and
the various versions of Internet Explorer. Furthermore, it takes care of testing the re-
quest’s readyState, so you leave that annoying if statement out of your handler.
Prototype has lots of built-in functions, some of which have been extensively used in
the Asterisk framework. There’s no room to discuss them here, but for more informa-
tion, see the Short Cuts Prototype Quick Reference by Scott Raymond and
Prototype and Scriptaculous: Taking the Pain Out of JavaScript by Chris Angus, both
from O’Reilly.

Customization of the GUI

Now that we’ve explored the different pieces that form the foundation of the Asterisk
GUI, we have what we need to be able to explore the GUI itself and modify it to fit our
needs. To get to the Asterisk GUI, go to the following address in your browser: http://
localhost:8088/asterisk/static/config/cfgbasic.html.
Looking at Figure 11-1 might lead you to conclude that the Asterisk GUI is simply one
more Asterisk GUI in an already crowded space. Nothing could be further from the
truth. This GUI doesn’t just allow you to tweak it, it practically begs you to. In this
section we are going to discuss how you can modify the GUI and use AJAM to build
your own extensions to the GUI. In order to benefit the most from this information,
you need some HTML and JavaScript knowledge.
The GUI home page is named cfgbasic.html. All other pages are loaded into the iframe
contained within the cfgbasic.html page. By default, cfgbasic.html loads home.html into
the main frame.

For most changes to the GUI, you’ll eventually need to modify cfgbasic.html, which is
the login screen.

Developing for the Asterisk GUI | 257