<!-- Module Sample descriptions -->

<chapter>
	<chapterinfo>
	<revhistory>
		<revision>
		<revnumber>$Revision: 1827 $</revnumber>
		<date>$Date: 2007-03-12 17:22:53 +0200 (Mon, 12 Mar 2007) $</date>
		</revision>
	</revhistory>
	</chapterinfo>
	<title>Perl samples</title>
	
	<section>
		<title>sample directory</title>
		<para>
		There are a number of example scripts in the <quote>samples/</quote>. They are
		documented well. Read them, it will explain a lot to you :)
		</para>
		<para>
		If you want to use any of these scripts directly in your implementation, you
		can use Perl's <quote>require</quote> mechanism to import them (just remember
		that you need to use quotes when require'ing .pl files).
		</para>
		<section>
			<title>Script descriptions</title>
			<para>
			The included sample scripts are described below:
			</para>
			<section>
				<title>branches.pl</title>
				<para>
				The minimal function in branches.pl demonstrates that you can access the "append_branch"
				function from within perl, just as you would have done from your normal configuration file.
				You'll find documentation on the concepts of branching in the OpenSER documentation.
				</para>
			</section>
			<section>
				<title>firstline.pl</title>
				<para>
				Message's first_line structure may be evaluated. Message can be either of
				SIP_REQUEST or SIP_REPLY. Depending on that, different information can be received.
				This script demonstrates these functions.
				</para>
			</section>
			<section>
				<title>flags.pl</title>
				<para>
				The perl module provides access to OpenSER's flagging mechanism. The flag names available
				for OpenSER modules are made available through the OpenSER::Constants package, so you can
				flag messages as "green", "magenta" etc.
				</para>
				<para>
				The first function, setflag, demonstrates how the "green" flag is set. In the second function,
				readflag, the "green" and "magenta" flags are evaluated.
				</para>
			</section>
			<section>
				<title>functions.pl</title>
				<para>
				This sample script demonstrates different things related to calling functions from within perl,
				and the different types of functions you can offer for OpenSER access.
				</para>
				<para>
				<quote>exportedfuncs</quote> simply demonstrates that you can use the moduleFunction method
				to call functions offered by other modules. The results are equivalent to calling these
				functions from your config file. In the demonstrated case, telephone calls with a destination
				number beginning with 555... are rejected with an internal server error. Other destination
				addresses are passed to the alias_db module.
				</para>
				<para>
				Please note that the moduleFunction method is not fully available in OpenSER 1.2. See the method's
				documentation for details.
				</para>
				<para>
				<quote>paramfunc</quote> shows that you can pass arbitrary strings to perl functions. Do with
				them whatever you want :)
				</para>
				<para>
				<quote>autotest</quote> demonstrates that unknown functions in OpenSER::Message objects are
				automatically transformed into calls to module functions.
				</para>
				<para>
				The <quote>diefunc</quote>s show that dying perl scripts - by "manual" dying, or because of script
				errors - are handled by the OpenSER package. The error message is logged through OpenSER's logging
				mechanism. Please note that this only works correctly if you do NOT overwrite the default die handler.
				Oh, yes, that works for warnings, too.
				</para>
			</section>
			<section>
				<title>headers.pl</title>
				<para>
				Header extraction is among the most crucial functionalities while processing SIP messages. This
				sample script demonstrates access to header names and values within two sample functions.
				</para>
				<para>
				<quote>headernames</quote> extracts all header names and logs their names.
				</para>
				<para>
				<quote>someheaders</quote> logs the contents of the two headers, <quote>To</quote> and
				<quote>WWW-Contact</quote>. As you can see, headers that occur more than once are retrieved
				as an array, which may be accessed by Perl's array accessing methods.
				</para>
			</section>
			<section>
				<title>logging.pl</title>
				<para>
				For debugging purposes, you probably want to write messages to the syslog. The <quote>logdemo</quote>
				shows three ways to access the OpenSER log function: it is available through the OpenSER class as well
				as through the OpenSER::Message class.
				</para>
				<para>
				Remember that you can use exported functions from other modules. You may thus as well use the
				<quote>xlog</quote> module and it's xlog function.
				</para>
				<para>
				The L_INFO, L_DBG, L_ERR, L_CRIT... constants are available through the OpenSER::Constants package.
				</para>
			</section>
			<section>
				<title>messagedump.pl</title>
				<para>
				This script demonstrates how to access the whole message header of the current message. Please note that
				modifications on the message made by earlier function calls in your configuration script may NOT be
				reflected in this dump.
				</para>
			</section>
			<section>
				<title>persistence.pl</title>
				<para>
				When processing SIP messages, you may want to use persistent data across multiple calls to your
				Perl functions. Your first option is to use global variables in your script. Unfortunately,
				these globals are not visible from the mulitple instances of OpenSER. You may want to use a
				mechanism such as the IPC::Shareable shared memory access package to correct this.
				</para>
			</section>
			<section>
				<title>phonenumbers.pl</title>
				<para>
				The OpenSER::Utils::PhoneNumbers package provides two methods for the transformation of local to
				canonical telephone numbers, and vice versa. This script demonstrates it's use.
				</para>
			</section>
			<section>
				<title>pseudovars.pl</title>
				<para>
				This script demonstrates the Perl module's <quote>pseudoVar</quote> method. It may be used to
				retrieve the values of current pseudo variables.
				</para>
				<para>
				You might notice that there is no particular function for setting pseudo variables; you may use
				the exported functions from the avpops module, though.
				</para>
			</section>
		</section>
	</section>
	<!-- section>
		<title>Other examples</title>
		<para>
<programlisting format="linespecific">
...
if (perl_exec_msg("ldap_alias")) {
	route[1];
}	
...
</programlisting>
		</para>
	</section -->

</chapter>

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