Wandering through the Wilderness - Utilizing TAPI from an ASP.NET application

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Utilizing TAPI from an ASP.NET application

I've gotten several email requests about using ATAPI from ASP.NET -- people have had trouble getting it to function properly so I figured I'd post an example of how it works. First, I'd recommend using ATAPI and not ITAPI3 - only because the latter pulls in COM objects which always makes things much more complex. The key thing to remember is where to hook up your events. Don't hook events inside your ASP.NET page-derived classes - that will keep the pages alive and cause memory leaks. Instead, use static methods (as presented here) or hook the events in global.asax or some other global shared class. I created a simple dialer in ASP.NET 2.0 through the following steps:

Create an ASP.NET website
Add a reference to ATAPI.DLL
Add a Global Application Class (global.asax)
Create the TapiManager class in your global application class
Utilize the TapiManager from your pages

As an example, here is my global.asax class - I chose to store the TapiManager class into the Application property bag, but you could just make it a global as well if you prefer that approach.

void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) 
{
    // Code that runs on application startup
    JulMar.Atapi.TapiManager tapiManager = new JulMar.Atapi.TapiManager("TestWebApp");
    if (!tapiManager.Initialize())
        System.Diagnostics.EventLog.WriteEntry("Application", "TapiManager failed to initialize");
    else
    {
        Application["tapi"] = tapiManager;
    }
}
    
void Application_End(object sender, EventArgs e) 
{
    //  Code that runs on application shutdown
    JulMar.Atapi.TapiManager tapiManager = (JulMar.Atapi.TapiManager)Application["tapi"];
    if (tapiManager != null)
        tapiManager.Shutdown();
}

Next, I added some markup to my default.aspx file to give me some server-side controls to manipulate TAPI with:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true"  CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head runat="server">
    <title>Untitled Page</title>
</head>
<body>
    <form id="form1" runat="server">
    <div>
        <h1>Sample TAPI Dialer</h1>
        <asp:Label runat="server" Text="Select Line:" />&nbsp;&nbsp;
        <asp:DropDownList ID="lineList" runat="server" />
        <br />
        <asp:Label runat="server" Text="Number to dial:" />&nbsp;&nbsp;
        <asp:TextBox runat="server" Width="100" ID="number" />&nbsp;&nbsp;
        <asp:Button runat="server" ID="dial" OnClick="DialNumber" Text=" Dial " />
        <asp:Button runat="server" ID="refresh" Text=" Refresh " />
        <br />
        <br />
        <asp:ListBox runat="server" ID="events" Width="400" Height="300" EnableViewState="false" />
    </div>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

Finally, I added the code-behind to actually do the dialing. As part of this, I hook the appropriate events using static methods - not instance methods so I don't keep the page alive longer than a single request. I also store all my TAPI events in a global string collection so that when the page is refreshed, I can display the current set of events.

using System;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Collections.Specialized;
using JulMar.Atapi;


public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page 
{
    static StringCollection data = new StringCollection();
	

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        TapiManager tapiManager = (TapiManager)Application["tapi"];
        if (!Page.IsPostBack)
        {
            if (tapiManager != null)
                lineList.DataSource = tapiManager.Lines;
        }


        events.DataSource = data;
        DataBind();
    }


    protected void DialNumber(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        TapiManager tapiManager = (TapiManager)Application["tapi"];
        string lineName = lineList.SelectedValue;


        TapiLine line = tapiManager.GetLineByName(lineName, true);
        if (line != null)
        {
            if (!line.IsOpen)
            {
                try
                {
                    line.Open(MediaModes.InteractiveVoice);
                }
                catch
                {
                    line.Open(MediaModes.DataModem);
                }


                line.NewCall += new EventHandler<NewCallEventArgs>(line_NewCall);
                line.CallInfoChanged += new EventHandler<CallInfoChangeEventArgs>(line_CallInfoChanged);
                line.CallStateChanged += new EventHandler<CallStateEventArgs>(line_CallStateChanged);
            }


            if (number.Text.Length > 0)
            {
                TapiCall call = line.MakeCall(number.Text);
                data.Add(string.Format("Created call: {0}", call));
            }
        }
    }


    static void line_NewCall(object sender, NewCallEventArgs e)
    {
        data.Add(string.Format("New call: {0}, {1}", e.Call, e.Privilege));
    }


    static void line_CallStateChanged(object sender, CallStateEventArgs e)
    {
        data.Add(string.Format("CallState: {0} is now {1}", e.Call.ToString(), e.CallState));
    }


    static void line_CallInfoChanged(object sender, CallInfoChangeEventArgs e)
    {
        data.Add(string.Format("CallInfo: {0} {1}", e.Call.ToString(), e.Change));
    }
}

This deploys and executes properly on Windows 2003 Server and IIS6. I did not try it under XP or IIS5, although I see no reason why it would not work as shown. Hopefully this will help someone out there trying to use TAPI from within a website!

Tuesday, November 14, 2006 10:01:25 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)

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