[Asterisk-java-users] AsteriskServer as a service / in a spring context ?

[Gaëtan M. <gm...@ea...>]

Hi Stefan

We are using the AsteriskServerImpl class inside a spring application.  
We however faced some problems as the stock AsteriskServerImpl seemed  
no so spring-friendly.

The main problems I faced are the following:

1/ There is no "start" method on the server. Instead it starts  "on  
demand" when sending the first action, or worst, when one adds a  
listener on it.
That means that the server automatically tries to start "too early"  
when spring wires the listener into it.

Is there a good reason to call initializeIfNeeded()  in the  
addAsteriskServerListener() method (and as a consequence have it  
potentially throw a MCE) ?

2/ If that very first connection fails in "initializeIfNeeded", then  
the method throws an MCE that escalades to the  
addAsteriskServerListener method and eventually reaches the spring  
context factory. As a result, the server is down and won't start again  
until we try to send something. Moreover as the exception was thrown  
before the actual listeners.add() call, our listener is eventually not  
added.
So the application completely fails to start in spring if it can't  
reach asterisk while starting.

NB: However if later asterisk is stopped, everything is fine as the  
connection handles the reconnection automatically. So I originally  
worked around this using a patched ConnectionImpl that simply started  
in the fake "RECONNECTING" state :)



I recently tried to clean all these modifications to ease my weekly  
merge against your trunk revision.
Here is a patch against head as of today. This is clearly not a  
request for inclusion but just meant to illustrate how I worked around  
the problem.
Indeed it is really not correct regarding object programing patterns  
but only meant to be small and not intrusive so you can easily see  
what I'm trying to implement.
If you think that kind of functionality is interesting, maybe I could  
write some cleaner code and submit it ?

In that event, I'd like to have your idea on the subject before I  
start. I personally think common functionality should then be moved to  
an abstract AbstractAsterikServerImpl class, with the child  
AsteriskServerImpl class maintaining the same behavior and semantic as  
the current one, and another one implementing the other "service- 
oriented" approach.

What do you think ?


Kind regards
Thanks for your great work.

Gaetan