From: gregarican <greg.kujawa@...>
Date: 2005-10-10T21:46:51+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby/DL Question

P wrote:

> could you expound on this, pls.
> are you saying that you are building a pure ruby telephony api?

What I am looking to do is write a group of Ruby classes that connect
to the TSAPI. This API is an existing interface that was developed
first by AT&T and then transferred to Novell. It implements the set of
CSTA standard protocol for communicating with certain PBX systems. I am
not building a new API per se, as I am just creating a Ruby way of
hooking into it. I have all of the C headers that define the CSTA
protocol, as well as the C++ header/implementation files for TSAPI. But
trying SWIG and other manual methods left me dizzy. There are a lot of
files involved and I'm totally clueless when it comes to wrapping or
translating things over :-) So I resorted to using Ruby/DL for
connecting to the csta32.dll file so that I can directly access the
methods using Ruby. Now it's just a question or accessing the other
methods that I need for full CTI functionality.

Right now I just tackled the first one, initializing the CSTA
communication stream that connects a client with the PBX system. We'll
see how long the rest of the methods take now that this one is done.
I'm hoping now that I have a better idea about the various method
parameters and their corresponding data types the rest will be a
downhill battle. There are roughly three dozen methods that will have
to be included. If/when I complete this I will place something out
there for people to review. I figure it can possibly make some people's
lives easier since they won't have to reinvent the wheel if they are
looking to access CTI using Ruby...