Asterisk SIP Messaging

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For correct messaging support, there are some changes required to core. Anyways, if you require this functionality within it's limits, there's a way to do it (at least for SIP). First, you'll need Asterisk presence set-up and working from CVS HEAD. Messages are delivered according to presence hints (and not according to dialplan). If you want, you can enable queuing, which requires sqlite3 database.

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After applying presence patch and configuring presence, visit this page: http://juraj.bednar.sk/work/software/asterisk/messaging/. sip_message_support.patch is a patch for chan_sip.c. On the top, choose if you want queuing support (queuing messages for delivery to devices when they become online): if you don't want queuing support, comment out the include, compile and that's all.

Otherwise, edit channels/Makefile and add -lsqlite3 to chan_sip.so CC line. Grab the chan_sip_queue* files, edit chan_sip_queue.h and set the path to the queue database (you will probably want to change that). Run chan_sip_queue_init.sh (from the channels directory, it needs chan_sip_queue.h in current directory to determine the path), which will initialize the queue (create a database and a table which will hold the queue). Compile, run and there you should go.

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Tested with Xten's eyeBeam. There should probably be better delivery checking, cleaner installation, etc. Patches should be mailed to author and asterisk (at) bednar (dOt) sk.

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There's also an interview http://www.sineapps.com/news.php?rssid=933 with Joshua Colp on Asterisk News page, where he mentions he is working on better messaging implementation for Google's Summer of Code. His work is availaible for download http://quark.file-radio.com/asterisk/asterisk-messaging-1.tgz, although I have no idea how it works besides what's mentioned in the interview. I hope he'll finish soon and post 1.2 asterisk will include comprehensive messaging support.

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Here is a version of the patch for asterisk 1.4.0 as 1.4.0 does not support SIP/SIMPLE messaging without the patch. It has been moderately tested so use with care. http://www.sipalive.com/dev/asterisk/

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You can get more details and patches (work in progress) for Asterisk (currently 1.4.20) and OpenFire (3.5) with the following extensions at ScopServ http://devel.scopserv.com/docs/im/ (Currently under development, patches will be available very soon) (2008/06/08)

• SIP MESSAGE (RFC 3428)
• SDP Extensions for SIP Instant Message Sessions
• SIP Instant Message Sessions
• SIMPLE-XMPP Gateway

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Comment by oej:

Although this is a great SIP patch, it will not be included in Asterisk due to it's one-channel perspective. As Juraj says, this is a hack and proof-of-concept. There are work going on to create a multi-protocol IM and presense solution for Asterisk.

Tip

If all breaks you could at least dig warnings like the one (taken from Asterisk 1.4.9) below out of /var/log/asterisk/messages:

See also

• Asterisk cmd SendText
• Asterisk call notification
• Sipsak
• Asterisk Jabber
• Asterisk presence
• receive text: AGI command