21.2. AGI Variants

There are a few variants of AGI that differ primarily in the method used to communicate with Asterisk. It is good to be aware of all of the options so you can make the best choice based on the needs of your application.

21.2.1. Process-Based AGI

Process-based AGI is the simplest variant of AGI. The “quick-start” example at the beginning of this chapter was an example of a process-based AGI script. The AGI script is invoked by using the AGI() application from the Asterisk dialplan. The application to run is specified as the first argument to AGI(). Unless a full path is specified, the application is expected to exist in the /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/ directory. Arguments to be passed to your AGI application can be specified as additional arguments to the AGI() application in the Asterisk dialplan. The syntax is: