AMI — powerful and convenient application interface (API) of Asterisk to control the system from external applications.
Due to AMI external applications can connect to Asterisk using TCP protocol, initiate command execution, fetch execution result, and get notifications about various events in real-time mode. You can use these mechanisms for example in following cases:
AMI is often used to integrate business-processes and systems, CRM software (Customer Relationship Managment). It also could be used for various applications, such as automatic dialers and click-to-call systems.
Asterisk control often is done from CLI console.
However when using AMI you don't need direct access to the server, on which Asterisk is launched.
AMI — is the simplest tool, which can become a very powerful and flexible mean of integration with other software products in developer's hands. It gaves possibility to developers to use information generated by Asterisk in real-time mode.
Between Smartswitch server and client application a simple line-by-line protocol is used, each line of which contains of 2 strings:
The key word is delimited from value by colon.
Below we will use a term «packet» to refer to a «key:value» construction set, which is delimited by CRLF and ended with additional CRLF sequence.
The protocol has the following characteristics:
AMI accepts connections on a network port (TCP 5038 by default). Client applications connects to AMI through this port and authenticates, after this Asterisk will respond to requests, and forward notifications about subsystem changes.
The type of a packet is determined by the existence of one of the following keys:
Generally the client sends Action packets to the Asterisk server, the Asterisk server performs the requested operation and returns the result (often only success or failure) in a Response packet. As there is no guarantee regarding the order of Response packets the client usually includes an ActionID parameter in every Action packet that is sent back by Asterisk in the corresponding Response packet. That way the client can easily match Action and Response packets while sending Actions at any desired rate without having to wait for outstanding Response packets before sending the next action.
Event packets are used in two different contexts: On the one hand they inform clients about state changes in Asterisk (like new channels being created and hung up or agents being logged in and out) on the other hand they are used to transport the response payload for actions that return a list of data (event generating actions). When a client sends an event generating action Asterisk sends a Response packed indicating success and containing a "Response: Follows" line. Then it sends zero or more events that contain the actual payload and finally an action complete event indicating that all data has been sent. The events sent in response to an event generating action and the action complete event contain the ActionID of the Action packet that triggered them, so you can easily match them the same way as Response packets. An example of an event generating action is the Status action that triggers Status events for each active channel. When all Status events have been sent a terminating a StatusComplete event is sent.
The next CLI command (Tab auto-completion works) can help to get full AMI command list, which are available at your Asterisk version:
*CLI> manager show commands
Response packets. As was written above, serve as answers to sent commands.
Only one response is sent per command and it can contain several meanings:
Event packets (notifications) are applied in two contexts. On one hand they inform client about Asterisk subsystem status change, on the other hand - they carry a data set, which is returned by Asterisk in response to some Action.
When client sends Action packet, Asterisk can (in cases when there is a need to return several records of the same type) send Response packet, which contains only record «Response: Follows». Then Asterisk sends some amount of events which contain data and, finally, an event which indicates that all data has been transmitted. All generated Event packets contain ActionID of the initial Action packet, which has initiated the query. Therefore, you can easily handle it, just as Response packets. An example of event which is generated by Action — is Action Status, which initiates Status event for each of active channels. When all Status events are sent, StatusComplete event is sent.
Events are created by various structural parts of Asterisk (channels SIP/IAX2/..., CDR, dialplan, various parts of kernel). The main feature, which is performed by events, is to allow external attached system to get information from Asterisk, gathering this information, analyzing it and acting accordingly to results.
To connect to AMI, you can use telnet application.
This is how system greeting looks like:
$ telnet 127.0.0.1 5038 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. Asterisk Call Manager/1.1
Then enter:
Action: login Username: admin Secret: passwd1234
and Enter 2 time, which is equivalent to CRLF
After this you should see this response (Response packet):
Response: Success Message: Authentication accepted
You can see all users, which are connected to AMI interface at the moment, from Asterisk console:
*CLI> manager show connected
The password change and command execution 'manager reload' doesn't influence to access right of already established AMI sessions.
If you don't need events which are generated by Asterisk (there can be lots of them, which could make reading responses in Asterisk console more difficult), then you can include one more record in parameters which are passed during authentication process:
Events: off
This parameter will turn off sending of Event packets from the side of server during current connection.
To terminate AMI session, need to type:
Action: logoff
After this we'll see in telnet session:
Response: Goodbye Message: Thanks for all the fish.
During AMI session termination, in Asterisk console we'll see following:
asterisk*CLI> == Manager 'admin' logged off from 127.0.0.1
Notice.
Of course AMI interface is not designed for administrator to manually logging in using telnet client and executing commands.
This example is demonstrated solely to show features and the workflow of exchanged Action, Event and Response packets.
However this approach could come in handy when learning and debugging of some particular command.
To see all commands which AMI supports, type from console:
asterisk *CLI> help manager