Internals tutorial

Getting familiar with switchio’s guts means learning to put the appropriate components together to generate a call. This simple guide is meant to provide some commentary surrounding low level components and interfaces so that you can begin reading the source code. It is assumed you are already familiar with the prerequisite deployment steps.

Primary Components

Currently there are 3 main objects in switchio for driving FreeSWITCH:

Connection - a thread safe wrapper around the ESL SWIG python package’s ESLConnection

EventListener - the type that contains the core event processing loop and logic

  • Primarily concerned with observing and tracking the state of a single FreeSWITCH process
  • Normally a one-to-one pairing of listeners to slave processes/servers is recommended to ensure deterministic control.
  • Contains a Connection used mostly for receiving events only transmitting ESL commands when dictated by :doc:`switchio apps <apps>`
Client - a client for controlling FreeSWITCH using the ESL inbound method
  • contains a Connection for direct synchronous commands and optionally an EventListener for processing asynchronous calls

For this guide we will focus mostly on the latter two since they are the primary higher level components the rest of the library builds upon.

Using a Client and EventListener pair

A Client can be used for invoking or sending synchronous commands to the FreeSWITCH process. It handles ESL api calls entirely on it’s own.

To connect simply pass the hostname or ip address of the slave server at instantiation:

>>> from switchio import Client
>>> client = Client('vm-host')
>>> client.connect()  # could have passed the hostname here as well
>>> client.api('status')  # call ESL `api` command directly
<ESL.ESLevent; proxy of <Swig Object of type 'ESLevent *' at 0x28c1d10> >

>>> client.cmd('global_getvar local_ip_v4')  # `api` wrapper which returns event body content
'10.10.8.21'

>>> client.cmd('not a real command')
Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
    File "switchio/api.py", line 1093, in cmd
       return self.api(cmd).getBody().strip()
    File "switchio/handlers.py", line 1084, in api
       consumed, response = EventListener._handle_socket_data(event)
    File "switchio/api.py", line 651, in _handle_socket_data
       raise APIError(body)
switchio.utils.APIError: -ERR not Command not found!

Now let’s initiate a call originating from the slave process’s caller which is by default the external sip profile:

>>> client.originate(dest_url='9196@intermediary_hostname:5060')
Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
    File "switchio/api.py", line 1177, in originate
        listener = self._assert_alive(listener)
    File "switchio/api.py", line 1115, in _assert_alive
        assert self.listener, "No listener associated with this client"
    File "switchio/api.py", line 973, in get_listener
        "No listener has been assigned for this client")
    AttributeError: No listener has been assigned for this client

The Client implements originate by making an asynchronous ESL bgapi call to the slave process. In order to track the eventual results of that call, an EventListener must be used which will collect the state changes triggered by the command (i.e. as received in event data from the slave process).

With this current architecture you can think of a listener as an object from which you can track FreeSWITCH state and a client as an interface which drives the slave process using commands to trigger new state(s). Again, any time a Client makes an asynchronous call an EventListener is needed to handle and report back the result(s).

Let’s create and assign an EventListener:

>>> from switchio import get_listener
>>> l = get_listener('vm-host')
>>> l  # initially disconnected to allow for unsubcriptions from the default event set
<EventListener [disconnected]>
>>> l.connect()
Feb 25 10:33:05 [INFO] switchio.EventListener@vm-host api.py:346 : Connected listener 'd2d4ee82-bd02-11e4-8b48-74d02bc595d7' to 'vm-host'
>>> l
<EventListener [connected]>
>>> l.start()
Feb 25 10:35:30 [INFO] switchio.EventListener@vm-host api.py:287 : starting event loop thread
>>> client.listener = l

Note

Alternatively an EventListener can be passed to the Client at instatiation time.

Now let’s attempt our originate once more this time executing the 9197 extension once the caller is answered, and calling the echo extension, 9196, at the callee end:

>>> client.originate('9196@vm-host:5080',
    dp_exten=9197,
    proxy='intermediary_hostname:5060'
)
<switchio.models.Job at 0x7feea01c6c90>

>>> client.listener.calls  # check the active calls collection
OrderedDict([('72451178-bd0c-11e4-9d26-74d02bc595d7', <Call(72451178-bd0c-11e4-9d26-74d02bc595d7, 2 sessions)>)])

Note

See the default dialplan packaged with stock FreeSWITCH. Use of these extensions assumes you have assigned the external sip profile to use the default dialplan by assigning it’s context parameter

The async originate call returns to us a switchio.models.Job instance (as would any call to switchio.api.Client.bgapi()). A Job provides the same interface as that of the multiprocessing.pool.AsyncResult and can be handled to completion synchronously:

>>> job = client.originate('9196@vm-host:5080',
    dp_exten=9197,
    proxy='intermediary_hostname:5060
)
>>> job.get(timeout=30)  # block up to 30 seconds waiting for result
'4d9b4128-bd0f-11e4-9d26-74d02bc595d7'  # the originated session uuid

>>> job.sess_uuid   # a special attr which is always reserved for originate results (i.e. session ids)
'4d9b4128-bd0f-11e4-9d26-74d02bc595d7'

>>> client.hupall()  # hangup the call

Call control using switchio apps

To use switchio at its fullest potential, applications can be written to process state tracked by the EventListener. The main benefit is that apps can be written in pure Python somewhat like the mod_python module provided with FreeSWITCH. switchio gives the added benefit that the Python process does not have to run on the slave machine and in fact multiple applications can be managed independently of multiple slave configurations thanks to switchio’s use of the ESL inbound method.

App Loading

switchio apps are loaded using switchio.api.Client.load_app(). Each app is referenced by it’s appropriate name (if none is provided) which allows for the appropriate callback lookups to be completed by the EventListener.

We can now accomplish the same tone play steps from above using the built-in TonePlay app:

>>> from switchio.apps.players import TonePlay
>>> client.load_app(TonePlay)
Feb 25 13:27:43 [INFO] switchio.Client@vm-host api.py:1020 : Loading call app 'TonePlay'
'fd27be58-bd1b-11e4-b22d-74d02bc595d7'  # the app uuid since None provided

>>> client.apps.TonePlay
<switchio.apps.players.TonePlay at 0x7f7c5fdaf650>

>>> isinstance(client.apps.TonePlay, TonePlay)  # Loading the app type instantiates it
True

Note

App loading is atomic so if you mess up app implementation you don’t have to worry that inserted callbacks are left registered with the EventListener

Assuming the switchio park-only dialplan is used by the external sip profile we can now originate our call again:

>>> job = client.originate('park@vm-host:5080',
    proxy='intermediary_hostname:5060',
    app_id=client.apps.TonePlay.cid
)
>>> job.wait(10)  # wait for call to connect
>>> call = client.listener.calls[job.sess_uuid]  # look up the call by originating sess uuid
>>> call.hangup()

Example Snippet

As a summary, here is an snippet showing all these steps together:

import time
from switchio import get_client, get_listener
from switchio.apps.players import TonePlay

# init
listener = get_listener('vm-host')
client = get_client('vm-host', listener=listener)
client.connect()
listener.connect()
listener.start()

# app load
id = client.load_app(TonePlay)
# make a call
job = client.originate(
    dest_url='park@vm-host',
    proxy='intermediary_hostname',
    app_id=id
)
sessid = job.get(30)
assert sessid == job.sess_uuid
# hangup
call = client.listener.calls[job.sess_uuid]
orig_sess = call.sessions[0]  # get the originating session
time.sleep(10)  # let it play a bit
orig_sess.hangup()

Conveniently enough, the boilerplate here is almost exactly what the get_client() context manager does internally. An example of usage can be found in the quickstart guide.