Rails connect to Asterisk and make phone calls - ruby-on-rails

Question

Hi i have googled all day long but i can't find an answer.
I have to write a web app which talks to asterisk.
It should be able to do ClicktoCall operations.
Can you guys recommend something ?
I came across a few projects but I'm still not sure.
I just want to connect to Asterisk and do calls from the web app.
thanks

Answer 1

If you're a Ruby programmer the best way for you to hook into Asterisk is adhearsion. It wraps up Asterisk's AGI and Manager (MAPI) APIs for you.
Also hAve a look at SIP, asterisk, adhearson and VoIP and in particular Adam Kalsey's answer. He works for Tropo which sponsor the adhearsion project.

Answer 2

First you need to know, that the protocol Asterisk uses is SIP, you can learn more at the Wikipedia.
Since you want to use an rails application, you may want to use ruby as well, so there's a ruby implementation named OverSip, you can check their API and see if it fits your requirements.
If you are aiming at web calls, you'll need an WebRTC, Flash or Java applet. For WebRTC you can check sipML5 for an opensource solution.
You can also opt for an interface, that will start a call from one number to another, using your phone. When the first call is picked up the server starts ringing in the destination.
Also you could make use of cloud communications providers like twilio, tropo, etc.

Answer 3

Try this Google search:
rails asterisk manager interface
I saw some interesting things right off. I am not trying to be one if those Use Google type people, just didn't want to paste all the links in that I found from this Google search.
Check it out, hope it helps.

Answer 4

There are several ways to do this but the three easiest ones are
1. Generate a call file on the Asterisk server
These files should be written to the dir
/var/spool/asterisk/outgoing
Asterisk will then pickup the file, process and delete it.
It's pretty aggressive when doing this so it's recommended to write the file into a temporary directory and then move it to the spool dir for processing.
An tutorial of the file format is here:
https://www.voip-info.org/asterisk-auto-dial-out/
(I personally feel this is a bit "hacky", and prefer doing it with an API call)
2. Generate the call by the AMI API interface.
Use the Originate function of the AMI API to generate the call. It's pretty easy to set this up just configure the manager.conf file whitch sets up a HTTP server on port 5038 from witch you can call the API.
https://www.voip-info.org/asterisk-config-managerconf/
3. Set up the call using the ARI API
First you need to setup ari.conf, this is enough for now:
[general]
enabled = yes
pretty=yes
allowed_origins=http://ari.asterisk.org
[my_username]
type = user
read_only = no
password = my_password
password_format = plain
This is a little bit more complicated to set up, but it really isn't that hard if you just get past the technical geek-speak. Just set up two channels, setup a mixing bridge and add both channels to the bridge.
To set up a click2call you dont even need to do that...
This is the call we use (ruby):
where
#{sip_id} is your registered SIP username
#{number} is the extension that is sent to the dialplan
#{USERNAME}
#{PASSWORD} is from ari.conf
HTTParty.post("http://sipserver.com/ari/channels?endpoint=SIP/#{sip_id}&extension=#{number}&context=outgoing&priority=1&timeout=30&api_key=#{USERNAME}:#{PASSWORD}")
(Note that you need to send the variabels for the variable parameter as a separate JSON for the originate command if you need to send them)
A really useful tool to understand how this works is the swagger at
http://ari.asterisk.org. We already allowed this origin in ari.conf so it should be ready to go. Remember to open your ports in firewalls etc.
Setup your Server IP and port and the API_KEY is in this format: my_username:my_password