Completing this chapter is an important milestone for the beginner. Understanding the concepts presented here is a large part of being able to configure and maintain a FreeSWITCH server. A number of topics were discussed. They are as follows:
The basic hierarchy of the FreeSWITCH XML Dialplan:
The Dialplan consists of one or more contexts
Contexts consist of one or more extensions
Extensions contain one or more conditions
Conditions usually have one or more actions or anti-actions
Regular expressions and pattern matching
An introduction to the concept of channel variables
How Dialplan parsing and processing works
Creating our own custom extension
A list of some of the more common and useful Dialplan applications
Having these basic skills, you should now be able to create truly useful extensions that do more than merely connect one telephone user to another. Although the Dialplan is very powerful and flexible, it is not in and of itself an IVR engine or a programming language. FreeSWITCH has...