This configuration reads a text file (limiting it to 130 characters or less) and then speaks the message to the caller.

exten => 3200,1,ReadFile(test=/tmp/test.txt,130)
exten => 3200,n,Festival(${test})
exten => 3200,n,Hangup

Use instructions to get Asterisk to use text-to-speech. Tested on Ubuntu 8.04 Sever.

*packages required*
festival
festvox-rablp16k

file: extensions.conf

detail
exten => 3250,1,Answer()
exten => 3250,n,Festival('hello world')
exten => 3250,n,Hangup

From the command-line type 'festival --server'
Then restart Asterisk

Following on from my earlier investigation into bluetooth proximity, I wanted something which returned a value which could be used to determine distance. The output from hcitool rssi ranges from 0 for close object down to -10 for far away objects.

rfcomm connect 0 00:12:D1:E6:57:BE

hcitool rssi 00:12:D1:E6:57:BE

Proximity Results:
-4 .. 0 : Bedroom - nearest to my bed
-4 .. -6 : Hallway
-8 .. -9 : Livingroom - on the computer desk
-9 .. -10 : Livingroom - nearest to the window

To run a Ruby script from Asterisk you need 2 things 1) an extension to run the script from 2) a Ruby script.

* Preparing the evironment *
1) create a script directory for Asterisk and ensure it has permission to run the scripts.

* Running the script *
1) Dial extension 3000
2) Listen to the voice say 'hello world'
3) Observe a new output.txt file has been created containing the message 'hello world!'

file: hello-world.rb

#!/usr/bin/ruby

#file : hello-world.rb

file = File.new('/etc/asterisk/ruby/output.txt','w')
file.puts 'hello world!'
file.close

file: extensions.rb

exten => 3000,1,Playback(hello-world)
exten => 3000,n,System(/etc/asterisk/ruby/./hello-world.rb)
exten => 3000,n,Hangup

file: output.txt

hello world!

The following instructions to call a telephone extension were copied into a file within the /var/spool/asterisk/outgoing file directory.

Channel: SIP/line1
MaxRetries: 2
RetryTime: 60
WaitTime: 30
Context: my-phones
Extension: 10

The extension 10 initiates the call to phone line1 within the context of my-phones.

Here's my working instructions to connect my Asterisk box as a client to my Jabber server. When a call comes in on extension 10 a message is sent to me.


file: jabber.conf

[general]
debug=yes                               ;;Turn on debugging by default.
autoprune=no                            ;;Auto remove users from buddy list.
autoregister=yes                        ;;Auto register users from buddy list. 

[asterisk]                              ;;label
type=client                             ;;Client or Component connection
serverhost=jamesrobertson.eu
                                        ;;      talk.google.com
username=asterisk@jamesrobertson.eu/Home        ;;Username with optional roster.

secret=XXXXXXXX                         ;;Password
port=5222                               ;;Port to use defaults to 5222
usetls=no                               ;;Use tls or not
;usesasl=yes                            ;;Use sasl or not
buddy=james@jamesrobertson.eu
statusmessage="I am available"          ;;Have custom status message for
                                        ;;Asterisk.
timeout=100                             ;;Timeout on the message stack.

file: extensions.conf

exten => 10,1,JABBERSend(asterisk,james@jamesrobertson.eu, Call from ${CALLERID(name)} at number <${CALLERID(num)}> on ${STRFTIME(,GMT-1,%A %B %d %G at %l:%M:%S %p)} )
exten => 10,n,Macro(stdexten,100,100)

output (observed in my chat window from user Asterisk)
Call from Line 1 - Home at number <6200> on Sunday May 18 2008 at 8:53:24 PM

This Ruby code raises an error if the XPath query fails because the attribute being queried did not exist for the given element.

  def map_pattr(node, fieldx, valuex)
    begin
    parameter = node.root.elements["parameter[@field='#{fieldx}']"]
    parameter.add_attribute('value', valuex)
    parameter
    
    rescue
      puts 'feedpopulated.rb: map_attr() the field ' + fieldx + ' was not found in params.'
      raise
    end
  end

Notice that a raise statement is used to ensure that the system error message is raised and any further code execution is halted.

Without adding a customized helpful message I would be left scratching my head trying to work out what the following system error message meant.

./feedpopulated.rb:27:in `map_pattr': undefined method `add_attribute' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)
     from ./feedpopulated.rb:51:in `create_record'
     from ./feedpopulated.rb:49:in `each'
     from ./feedpopulated.rb:49:in `create_record'
     from ./recordx.rb:91:in `call_create'
     from ./s3fileuploader_handler.rb:14:in `call'
     from ./s3fileuploader_handler.rb:40:in `invoke'
     from ./uploadtwitteraudio.rb:22:in `initialize'
     from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/element.rb:890:in `each'
     from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/xpath.rb:53:in `each'
     from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/element.rb:890:in `each'
     from ./uploadtwitteraudio.rb:18:in `initialize'
     from ./uploadtwitteraudio.rb:72:in `new'
     from ./uploadtwitteraudio.rb:72

Reference: Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide - Exceptions, Catch, and Throw [ruby-doc.org]

A few XPath examples copied from XPath Syntax [w3schools.com]

Predicates

/bookstore/book[1] 	# Selects the first book element that is the child of the bookstore element. 
                        # Note: IE5 and later has implemented that [0] should be the first node, 
                        # but according to the W3C standard it should have been [1]!!
/bookstore/book[last()] 	# Selects the last book element that is the child of the bookstore element
/bookstore/book[last()-1] 	# Selects the last but one book element that is the child of the bookstore element
/bookstore/book[position()<3] 	# Selects the first two book elements that are children of the bookstore element
//title[@lang] 	# Selects all the title elements that have an attribute named lang

Selecting Unknown Nodes

/bookstore/* 	# Selects all the child nodes of the bookstore element
//* 	# Selects all elements in the document
//title[@*] 	# Selects all title elements which have any attribute

Selecting Several Paths

//book/title | //book/price  	# Selects all the title AND price elements of all book elements

1) Log into an irb session, and enter your S3 login details.

require 'rubygems'
require 'aws/s3'

  AWS::S3::Base.establish_connection!(
    :access_key_id     => 'REPLACE_ME',
    :secret_access_key => 'REPLACE_ME'
  )

output:
=> #<AWS::S3::Connection:0xb75e0594 @http=#<Net::HTTP s3.amazonaws.com:80 open=false>, @secret_access_key="", @options={:server=>"s3.amazonaws.com", :access_key_id=>"", :port=>80, :secret_access_key=>"", :persistent=>true}, @access_key_id="19S45GYAGWK8DC2B8VG2">

2) Browse the existing buckets.

AWS::S3::Service.buckets

output:
=> [#<AWS::S3::Bucket:0xb75cc850 @object_cache=[], @attributes={"name"=>"ogg.twitteraudio.com", "creation_date"=>Sat Apr 26 10:40:16 UTC 2008}>, #<AWS::S3::Bucket:0xb75cc83c @object_cache=[], @attributes={"name"=>"t1000", "creation_date"=>Fri Apr 25 21:35:21 UTC 2008}>, #<AWS::S3::Bucket:0xb75cc814 @object_cache=[], @attributes={"name"=>"t2000", "creation_date"=>Fri Apr 25 21:53:15 UTC 2008}>]

3) Browse the buckets in a programmatical way.

AWS::S3::Service.buckets.each {|b| puts b.name}

output:
ogg.twitteraudio.com
t1000
t2000


4) Add a new bucket called t3000.

AWS::S3::Bucket.create('t3000')

output:
=> true

5) Observe adding the bucket again doesn't cause an error.

AWS::S3::Bucket.create('t3000')

output:
=> true

6) View the buckets again.

AWS::S3::Service.buckets

output:
=> [#<AWS::S3::Bucket:0xb75cc850 @object_cache=[], @attributes={"name"=>"ogg.twitteraudio.com", "creation_date"=>Sat Apr 26 10:40:16 UTC 2008}>, #<AWS::S3::Bucket:0xb75cc83c @object_cache=[], @attributes={"name"=>"t1000", "creation_date"=>Fri Apr 25 21:35:21 UTC 2008}>, #<AWS::S3::Bucket:0xb75cc814 @object_cache=[], @attributes={"name"=>"t2000", "creation_date"=>Fri Apr 25 21:53:15 UTC 2008}>]

Note: You would expect t3000 to be in there however it didn't appear possibly because of the bucket permissions.

7) Let's then look for bucket t3000.

t3000 = AWS::S3::Bucket.find('t3000')

output:
=> #<AWS::S3::Bucket:0xb76df724 @object_cache=[], @attributes={"prefix"=>nil, "name"=>"t3000", "marker"=>nil, "max_keys"=>1000, "is_truncated"=>false, "xmlns"=>"http://s3.amazonaws.com/doc/2006-03-01/"}>

8) Now that we've found the bucket let's upload a text file called works.txt.

file = "works.txt"

output:
=> "works.txt"

AWS::S3::S3Object.store(file, open(file), 't3000', :access => :public_read)

output:
=> #<AWS::S3::S3Object::Response:0x-608926458 200 OK>

9) Setting the file access to :public_read allows us to view the file from the http location http://t3000.s3.amazonaws.com/works.txt

References:
http://amazon.rubyforge.org/
upload_to_s3 - Ruby S3 upload client [dzone.com]

*update: 14:30 30 April 2008 *
I didn't use Bucket.objects(:reload) which is the reason why the bucket t3000 didn't show up with the statement Service.buckets

Reference: spatten design - Amazon S3, Ruby and Rails slides [spattendesign.com]

This ruby code builds upon the code S3 upload client for Ruby [dzone.com] by reading the account details and file details from XML files.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
#file : rubys3file2upload.rb

require 'rubygems'
require 'aws/s3'
require 'rexml/document'
include REXML

class S3FileUpload

  def initialize(xml_accounts_file, xml_upload_file)
    initialize_account(xml_accounts_file)
    main(xml_upload_file)
  end

  def initialize_account(accounts_file)

    file = File.new(accounts_file)
    doc = Document.new(file)

    account = doc.root.elements['records/access']
    h = Hash.new
    h[:access_key_id] = account.elements['key_id'].text.to_s
    h[:secret_access_key] = account.elements['secret'].text.to_s
    AWS::S3::Base.establish_connection!(h)

  end

  def main(xml_upload_file)
    file = File.new(xml_upload_file)
    doc = Document.new(file)
puts doc
    doc.root.elements.each('records/file') do |f|
      local_file = f.elements['local'].text.to_s
      bucket = f.elements['bucket'].text.to_s
      mime_type = f.elements['mime_type'].text.to_s
      upload(local_file, mime_type, bucket)
    end
  end

  def upload(local_file, mime_type, bucket)

    base_name = File.basename(local_file)

    puts "Uploading #{local_file} as '#{base_name}' to '#{bucket}'"

    AWS::S3::S3Object.store(
      base_name,
      File.open(local_file),
      bucket,
      :content_type => mime_type,
      :access => :public_read
    )

    puts "Uploaded!"
  end

end

if __FILE__ == $0
  s3fu = S3FileUpload.new('s3accounts.xml', 's3files2upload.xml')
end

file: s3accounts.xml

<s3accounts>
  <summary/>
  <records>
    <access id="100"><name>REPLACE_ME</name><key_id>REPLACE_ME</key_id><secret>REPLACE_ME</secret></access>
  </records>
</s3accounts>

file: s3files2upload.xml

<s3files2upload>
  <summary/>
  <records>
    <file>
      <local>autocomplete.html</local>
      <bucket>t2000</bucket>
      <mime_type>text/html</mime_type>
    </file>
    <file>
      <local>autocomplete2.html</local>
      <bucket>t2000</bucket>
      <mime_type>text/html</mime_type>
    </file>
    <file>
      <local>autocomplete3.html</local>
      <bucket>t2000</bucket>
      <mime_type>text/html</mime_type>
    </file>
  </records>
</s3files2upload>

Note: The file given the correct permission could be read from http://t2000.s3.amazonaws.com/autocomplete.html

Reference: http://amazon.rubyforge.org/