Configuration File Names and Structure

With one exception, the interface to a plugin, has not changed; the reading of configuration data in a plugin is backwards compatible with the implementation in version 4.2.

The exception is a #Redirect Plugin Interface Change

There are 4 parts to the configuration for a plugin (with the colors used for them below):

The hook that the plugin module should be called by (effectively what subclass of 'Plugin' it is); shown in red.
The name of the plugin instance (it is possible to configure more than one copy of the same plugin with different names, each with its configuration values); shown in blue
The shared library that implements the plugin; shown in green
Any configuration name/value pairs required by the plugin; shown in orange

The Old Way

In 4.2 and earlier, all plugins for a component were configured by adding lines to the (single) *-config file for the component; in the case of the registrar, this is /etc/sipxpbx/registrar-config

Every plugin configuration required a line to configure the library, but parts of that line also provided the hook and the instance. This configuration line was constructed as:

hookname_HOOK_LIBRARY.instancename : librarypath

Each line in the configuration that matched that pattern configured the existence of a plugin instance and specified its library. The line in the registrar-config file that adds the mapping rules redirector plugin is:

SIP_REDIRECT_HOOK_LIBRARY.130-MAPPING : /usr/lib/libRedirectorMapping.so

If no configuration parameters are needed by the plugin, that that one line is all that was needed. When the plugin needs parameters, the configuration lines for those values were constructed as:

hookname.instancename.paramname : paramvalue

The directive that configures the file name for the mapping rules file name is:

SIP_REDIRECT.130-MAPPING.MAPPING_RULES_FILENAME : /etc/sipxpbx/mappingrules.xml

The New Way

In 4.3 each hook for a component has a directory into which a separate configuration file is written for each plugin instance. So, for the registrar, which has two different plugin hooks, there will be two directories:

/etc/sipxpbx/redirect-hook/
/etc/sipxpbx/registrar-hook/

The individual plugin configuration file name is contructed using the instance name and the suffix .plugin:

instancename.plugin

The contents of the plugin configuration files are simpler in the new scheme, since encoding the hook and instance names in the contents is not required.

To configure the library name every .plugin configuration file must contain at least a HOOK_LIBRARY value:

HOOK_LIBRARY : librarypath

If no configuration parameters are needed by the plugin, then that one line is all that is needed.

When the plugin does need parameters, the configuration lines for those values are just the parameter name and value:

paramname : paramvalue

So, to add the mappingrules redirector plugin and assign its file name, the file /etc/sipxpbx/redirect-hook/130-mapping.plugin is written:

HOOK_LIBRARY : /usr/lib/libRedirectorMapping.so
MAPPING_RULES_FILENAME : /etc/sipxpbx/mappingrules.xml

List of Plugins

Component	PluginClass	Description	Old Prefix	New Directory
sipXregistry	RegisterPlugin	Registration side effects	SIP_REGISTRAR	/etc/sipxpbx/registrar-hook
sipXregistry	RedirectPlugin	Routing lookups	SIP_REDIRECT	/etc/sipxpbx/redirect-hook
sipXproxy	AuthPlugin	Authorization checks	SIPX_PROXY	/etc/sipxpbx/auth-hook

Redirect Plugin Interface Change

If you have written a RedirectPlugin that is not in the sipXecs sources, then this interface change is important to you; if not, you can ignore it.

In 4.2, the authority level of a plugin was configured using the naming convention of a plugin parameter, like this:

SIP_REDIRECT.130-MAPPING.AUTHORITY_LEVEL : 40

but it was actually read and acted on by the SipRouter class in the redirect server directly. This was cumbersome, but reasonable since all the directives were in the same configuration file.

In order to avoid the SipRouter needing to scan the now-separate plugin configurations a second time (the first being the scan that instatiates the plugins), the base RedirectPlugin class has had two methods added:

void readAuthorityLevel(OsConfigDb& configDb which must now be called from the readConfig method of any plugin to read the authority level configuration from its own configuration file
int authorityLevel(void) which is now called from the SipRouter after the configurations are loaded. The default base class implementation of readConfig has been modified to make this call.