Question about possible plugin - where should I start?

Hello,

I am using the presence plugin to show user presence status on a web page.

I am also impressed by the idea of the Asterisk-IM plugin to link to a phone system and send presence messages to indicate users are on the phone. But, we don’'t have an asterisk pbx. We do have a system that I can get phone events from, so I have part one:

As I don’'t need any asterisk specific features, I was thinking that it would be useful to expose a generic way to /set/ presence information for users, e.g. by http or xml/rpc. Like the presence plugin in reverse, or building on it.

I would also like the presence plugin to be able to show a phone icon for people who are on the phone, like spark is pictured doing in the Asterisk-IM plugin screenshots.

So, my questions are:

  1. Is the source for the presence plugin available? I haven’'t been able to find a link to it anywhere yet.

  2. Any thoughts on my general suggestion or where I could start? I have the SVN trunk source for asterisk-im, but am a bit daunted by it - it seems a bit overkill to try and modify it.

Does the idea for a plugin to allow set-presence-by-http idea sound reasonable? feasible?

Any thoughts welcomed.

Cheers,

Simon.

Hi Simon,

Your first question is easy to answer: The source for all plugins is included in the SVN branch of Wildfire. You can either check out that, or have a look at it through FishEye.

Good luck!

Hi,

Thank you, I have the wildfire source and have been able to build it and start modifying the presence plugin (surprisingly easy to get going).

(I love the way the plugins are loaded and removed dynamically by just adding/removing the .jar file - and I don’'t even need to logout/login to the management interface!)

I’‘m still indecisive about exactly what I’'m aiming for and where the implementation bits should go, but at least I have everything I need to get there.

Hey Simon,

I’'m looking for the exact same thing. Did you end up creating your own plugin? If so, would you mind sharing it?

Thanks in advance,

Mike

Hi,

The short answer is that I didn’'t get very far, and have nothing much to share - sorry.

The longer answer is:

After starting this thread, I set about deciding a good way to do this that wouldn’‘t take a large amount of time to implement. I’‘m not fluent in Java, so I didn’'t want to do anything as complex as connecting to our phone system as a wildfire plugin. So, I decided that the simplest thing that could possibly work would be:

To take the web-status plugin for Wildfire that already exists - this allows you to put an image on a webpage which calls something like http://wildfireserver/plugins/status/username and have an image showing their status.

Then to modify the plugin so that as well as getting the status, it would support another URL call to set the status - as if the user themselves had changed their status from an IM client. (With a way of limiting who could do this).

With that simple change, I can have an external program to handle the “phone system -> wildfire” link, and write it in a language that I am happier with.

But, I didn’‘t get very far before it was pushed aside - as far as adding an “allow change of status via url, yes/no” option to the plugin screen - and I haven’‘t gone back to it since. I keep meaning to, but haven’'t got round to it yet…

Cheers,

Simon.