Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, 2nd Edition

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 application, but ...