A newcomer to Asterisk will look at the above constructs and
descriptions, and ask, "Where's the string manipulation functions?",
"Where's all the cool operators that other languages have to offer?",
etc.
The answer is that the rich capabilities of Asterisk are made
available through AEL, via:
- Applications: See Asterisk - documentation of application
commands
- Functions: Functions were implemented inside ${ .. } variable
references, and supply many useful capabilities.
- Expressions: An expression evaluation engine handles items
wrapped inside $[...]. This includes some string manipulation
facilities, arithmetic expressions, etc.
- Application Gateway Interface: Asterisk can fork external
processes that communicate via pipe. AGI applications can be
written in any language. Very powerful applications can be added
this way.
- Variables: Channels of communication have variables associated
with them, and asterisk provides some global variables. These can be
manipulated and/or consulted by the above mechanisms.
lmadsen
2010-01-14
