FreeSWITCH is increasingly becoming the "serious choice" for companies to base their products and offerings on. Its usage is widespread, scaling from Raspberry Pis to "Big Irons" in the data center.
There is a growing need for books and training, and with Packt Publishing, we decided to begin serving this burgeoning demand. This cookbook is a primer; then there will be a Mastering FreeSWITCH book, followed by a new edition of the classic FreeSWITCH book.
Obviously, nothing can beat a training camp or codeveloping in collaboration with an old hand, but these FreeSWITCH titles will form the basis on which a company or a consultant can begin embracing, deploying, and implementing FreeSWITCH.
This book is a complete update, rewrite, and integration of the old FreeSWITCH cookbook. This new edition covers FreeSWITCH 1.6.x, and a lot of new ground.
All the examples here have been updated and tested with the new FreeSWITCH series, while a new section has been added about connecting to Skype, and two entire chapters are on WebRTC and Lua programming.
Anthony Minessale II, Giovanni Maruzzelli
July 5 2015
Chapter 1, Routing Calls, shows that getting calls from one endpoint to another is the primary function of FreeSWITCH. This chapter discusses techniques of efficiently routing calls between phones and service providers.
Chapter 2, Connecting Telephones and Service Providers, assists in quickly getting your FreeSWITCH server connected to other VoIP devices. Telephones and service providers have specific requirements for connecting to FreeSWITCH.
Chapter 3, Processing Call Detail Records, discusses a number of ways to extract CDR data from your FreeSWITCH server. Call detail records, or CDRs, are very important for businesses.
Chapter 4, External Control, presents a number of real-world examples of controlling FreeSWITCH from an external process. FreeSWITCH can be controlled externally by the powerful and versatile event socket interface.
Chapter 5, PBX Functionality, is the largest chapter in this book. This chapter shows how to deploy features such as voicemail, conference calls, faxing, IVRs, and more, which most telephone systems have, in a FreeSWITCH server.
Chapter 6, WebRTC and Mod_Verto, features the new disruptive technology that allows real-time audio/video/data-secure communication from hundreds of millions of browsers. FreeSWITCH is ready to serve as a gateway and an application server.
Chapter 7, Dialplan Scripting with Lua, covers Lua, the scripting language of choice for programming complex logic in FreeSWITCH. Accessing databases, calling web servers, and interacting with user's choices now becomes easy.
FreeSWITCH 1.6 Cookbook is an essential addition to any VoIP administrator's or WebRTC developer's library. PBX implementers will also gain from the thoroughly distilled recipes presented here.
Whether you are a FreeSWITCH expert or are just getting started, this book will take your skills to the next level.
FreeSWITCH 1.6 Cookbook is written for anyone who wants to learn more about using FreeSWITCH in production. The information is presented in such a way that you can get up and running quickly. The cookbook approach eschews much of the foundational concepts, and instead focuses on discrete examples that illustrate specific features. If you need to implement a particular feature as quickly as possible, then this book is for you.
In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it works, There's more, and See also).
To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use the following sections.
This section tells you what to expect in the recipe, and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.
This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the previous section.
This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make you more knowledgeable about the recipe.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Many of the techniques employed in Local_Extension are discussed in this chapter."
A block of code is set as follows:
<include>
<extension name="public_did">
<condition field="destination_number"expression="^(8005551212)$">
<action application="set" data="domain_name=$${domain}"/>
<action application="transfer" data="1000 XML default"/>
</condition>
</extension>
</include>When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
<include>
<extension name="public_did">
<condition field="destination_number"expression="^(8005551212)$">
<action application="set" data="domain_name=$${domain}"/>
<action application="transfer" data="1000 XML default"/>
</condition>
</extension>
</include>Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
perl -MCPAN -e 'install Regexp::Assemble'
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "You should see an application named directory in the list."
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