Dial Status Reporting using PHP
Overview
Dial Status Reporting is the concept of checking the call status of an ongoing call to decide and process a call based on its status. For all the calls made using Plivo’s Make a Call API or Dial XML, Plivo sends the call status to your application server during different stages of a call. Call status will be sent as an HTTP webhook request to multiple URLs such as ring_url, answer_url, fallback_url, action_url, callback_url, and hangup_url.
Plivo will send one of the following values under the CallStatus parameter:
in-progress | The call has been answered and is currently in progress. Calls under this status can be explicitly terminated using the Hangup API. |
completed | The call has been completed. Its either terminated using the Hangup API or ended by one of the parties in the call. |
ringing | The call is currently ringing. This status is sent to the Ring URL. |
no-answer | The call hasn't been answered by the callee. Your application must have the logic to parse this parameter and take actions based on this. |
busy | The callee is busy on a different call. You should retry after sometime. |
cancel | The call has been canceled by the caller |
timeout | There was a time out while connecting your call. This is either an issue with one of the terminating carriers or network lag in our system. |
The following parameters are sent to your app server in the HTTP webhook:
Parameter | Description |
---|---|
DialRingStatus | This indicates if the <Dial> attempt rang or not. It can be true or false. |
DialHangupCause | The standard telephony hangup cause. |
DialStatus | Status of the dial.Can be completed, busy, failed, timeout or no-answer. |
DialALegUUID | CallUUID of the A leg. |
DialBLegUUID | CallUUID of the B leg. Empty if nobody answers. |
This guide will help you to understand the importance of dial status reporting for your use-case.
Start your implementation with Plivo for dial status reporting using PHLO or the traditional API/XML way. PHLO allows you to create and deploy the call flows using its intuitive canvas in few clicks. Refer to the instructions from the respective tabs below to start your integration with PHLO or XML as you wish.
For Dial Status Reporting, you can create and deploy a PHLO with a few clicks on the PHLO canvas. PHLO also lets you visually construct your entire use-case. With PHLO, you only pay for calls you make/receive, and building with PHLO is free.
Outline
Implementation
In this section, we will guide you to create a PHLO for Dial Status Reporting.
Prerequisites
- Create a Plivo Account(if you don’t have one already): You can sign up with your work email address and complete the phone verification step using your mobile number.
- Buy a Plivo number: You must have a voice-enabled Plivo phone number to receive incoming calls. You can purchase numbers from the Numbers section of your Plivo Console. It is also possible to purchase numbers using the Numbers API.
- PHLO Application: When you receive a call on a Plivo voice-enabled number, you can control the call flow by associating a PHLO application to that Plivo phone number. Plivo will fetch the PHLO associated with the number and expect valid instructions via PHLO to handle the call.
Create the PHLO
You can implement Dial Status Reporting app using PHLO by referring to the below GIF and instructions.
- On the side navigation bar, click PHLO. The PHLO page will appear and display your existing PHLOs, if any. If this is your first PHLO, then the PHLO page will be empty.
- Click Create New PHLO to build a new PHLO.
- On the Choose your use-case window, click Build my own. The PHLO canvas will appear with the Start node.Note: The Start node is the starting point of any PHLO. You can choose between the four available trigger states of the Start node; Incoming SMS, Incoming Call, and API Request. For this PHLO, we will use the API Request trigger state.
- From the list of components, on the left hand side, drag and drop the Call Forward component onto the canvas. This will add a Call Forward node onto the canvas.
- Connect the Start node with the Call Forward node, using the Incoming Call trigger state.
- Configure the Call Forward node to select the From number using a variable. Enter all the numbers you wish to call in the To field, separated with commas.
- Once you have configured a node, click Validate to save the configurations.
- Next, from the list of components, drag and drop the HTTP Request component onto the canvas.
- Connect the Call Forward node with the HTTP Request node, using all the Dial Status states such as Completed, No Answer, Busy/Rejected, & Failed.
- Configure the HTTP Request node. Enter your application server URL in the box next to the HTTP Method(GET/POST) field.
- Also, provide the key:value pair of the callback attributes such as
DialRingStatus, DialHangupCause, DialStatus, DialALegUUID, & DialBLegUUID
. - After you complete the configurations, click Save. Your PHLO is now ready. Link the PHLO to a Plivo Phone Number and test it out. For more information, see Configure the PHLO to Your Plivo Number.
Configure the PHLO to Your Plivo Number
Once you have created and configured your PHLO, You can configure the PHLO to one of your Plivo numbers by following the instructions below:
- On the side navigation bar, click Phone Numbers. The Phone Numbers page will appear and display your existing Phone numbers(if any). If this is your first PHLO, then the PHLO page will be empty.
- On the Phone Numbers page, you can either select one of your existing Plivo numbers and configure the PHLO or buy a new number if you do not have one already. Refer to the Buy a Phone Number Guide for more information.
- After selecting your Plivo number, on the Your Numbers page, under the number configuration section, you can select the Application Type as PHLO and select your PHLO from the PHLO list and click on
Update Number
once done.
Test and Validate
You can now make a call to your Plivo phone number from one of the blocked phone number(s) or country and see that the calls are rejected using PHLO. If you make a call from any other number, the call will be forwarded as specified in the PHLO.
For more information about creating a PHLO app, see the PHLO User Guide.
For information on components and their variables, see the PHLO Components Library.
If you still wish to implement dial status reporting in the traditional API/XML way, you can refer to the instructions in the following section to begin your implementation.
Outline
Implementation
In this section, we will guide you in setting up an dial status reporting app on your Plivo number. In this example, when an incoming call is received, the call will be forwarded as the XML returned from your answer_url will be a <dial> XML. Once the destination number(s) amswers the call, the status of the call will be sent to your app server. This example uses an action URL in the Dial XML. After completion of the call, Plivo will report back the status to this URL. You can control the call flow by returning a valid Plivo XML from the action URL and setting the redirect attribute as “true”. In this example, Plivo will POST the call status to http://foo.com/dialstatus/action/ and expects a valid XML since the redirect attribute is set to “true”.
Prequisites
- Create a Plivo Account (if you don’t have one already): You can Sign up with your work email address and complete the phone verification step using your mobile number.
- Buy a Plivo Number: You must have a voice-enabled Plivo phone number if you are willing to receive incoming calls. You can purchase numbers from the Numbers section of your Plivo Console. It is also possible to purchase numbers using the Numbers API.
Answer URL & Callback URLs: When a call is received on a Plivo voice-enabled number, you can control the call flow by declaring an answer URL for your Plivo application associated with that Plivo phone number. Plivo will invoke the answer URL specified and expect a valid XML response to handle the call.
Notice how the concept of Answer URLs applies to both outbound API calls as well as incoming calls to your Plivo numbers. In the outbound API call example in the Make-Outbound-Calls use-case guide, we specified the answer URL along with the make call API request, whereas in the case of incoming calls to Plivo numbers, the answer URL is specified in the Plivo application associated with the phone number.
In addition to requests to the answer URL, Plivo initiates HTTP requests to your application server through the course of a call based on the specific XML elements in your answer XML. Such requests can be broadly classified into two categories:
Action URL requests: XML instructions to carry forward the call are expected in response to these requests. These requests are typically invoked at the end of an XML element’s execution. For example: when an IVR input is received from the caller during a GetInput XML execution.
Callback URL requests: No XML instructions are expected in response to these requests. Such requests serve as webhooks to notify your application server of important events through the course of an XML element’s execution. For example: when a conference participant is muted or unmuted.
- Set Up Your Web Server: To be able to host Answer and Callback URLs and to be able to provide valid XMLs and accept notifications on these URLs respectively, you need to host a webserver at your end. To set up your Web Server in your preferred programming language, please refer to the instructions available in the Set Up Laravel Server for Incoming Calls & Callbacks section.
Set Up Laravel server for Incoming Calls & Callbacks.
In this section, we’ll walk you through how to set up a Laravel server in under five minutes and start handling incoming calls & callbacks.
Install PHP
Operating System | Instructions |
---|---|
OS X | You can install PHP using the official installer. You can also install it from here. |
Linux | To install PHP on Linux you can find the instructions here. |
Windows | To install PHP on Windows you can use the official installer. |
Install Composer
Composer is a dependency manager for PHP that is used in all modern PHP frameworks, such as Symfony and Laravel. We highly recommend using Composer as the package manager for your web project.
- Download the latest version of Composer.
Run the following command in Terminal in order to run the composer:
$ php ~/Downloads/composer.phar --version
Note: PHAR (PHP archive) is an archive format for PHP that can be run on the command line
Run the following command to make it executable:
$ cp ~/Downloads/composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer $ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/composer $ Make sure you move the file to bin directory.
To check if the path has /usr/local/bin, use
$ echo $PATH
If the path is different, use the following command to update the $PATH:
$ export PATH = $PATH:/usr/local/bin $ source ~/.bash_profile
Note: If your PATH doesn’t include /usr/local/bin directory, we recommend adding it so that you can access it globally.
You can also check the version of Composer by running the following command:
$ composer --version.
Run the following command:
$ curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
Run the following command to make the composer.phar file as executable:
$ chmod +x composer.phar
Note: PHAR (PHP archive) is an archive format for PHP that can be run on the command line
Run the following command to make Composer globally available for all system users:
$ mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
Download and run the Windows Installer for Composer.
Note: Make sure to allow Windows Installer for Composer to make changes to your php.ini file.
- If you have any terminal windows open, close all instances and open a fresh terminal instance.
Run the Composer command.
$ composer -V
Install Laravel & Create a Laravel Project
Use the below command to install Laravel:
$ composer require laravel/installer
As we have Laravel and its dependencies installed, we can use them to create a new Laravel project. As the initial step, using Laravel we can auto-generate code in the Laravel folder structure.
Change the directory to our project directory in the command line:
$ cd mylaravelapp
Use the below command to start your Laravel project:
$ composer create-project laravel/laravel quickstart --prefer-dist
To install the stable release, run the following command in the project directory:
$ composer require plivo/plivo-php
This will create a quickstart directory with the necessary folders & files for development.
Install Plivo
To install a specific release, run the following command in the project directory:
$ composer require plivo/plivo-php:4.15.0
Alternatively, you can download this source and run
$ composer install
This generates the autoload files, which you can include using the following line in your PHP source code to start using the SDK.
<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php'
Create a Laravel Controller for Dial Status Reporting
Change the directory to our newly created project directory, i.e, quickstart directory and run the below command to create a Laravel controller to screen incoming calls.
$ php artisan make:controller VoiceController
This will generate a controller named VoiceController in the app/http/controllers/ directory. Now, You have to open the app/http/controllers/voiceController.php file and add the following code:
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<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
require '../../vendor/autoload.php';
use Plivo\RestClient;
use Plivo\XML\Response;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
class VoiceController extends Controller
{
// Speak XML to handle your first incoming call
public function dialStatus()
{
$r = new Response();
// Add Speak tag
$body = "Connecting your call..";
$r->addSpeak($body);
$params = array(
'action' => 'https://example.com/dial_action/', # Redirect to this URL after leaving Dial.
'method' => 'GET' # Submit to action URL using GET or POST.
);
// Add Dial tag
$d = $r->addDial($params);
$number = "+15671234567";
$d->addNumber($number);
Header('Content-type: text/xml');
echo($r->toXML());
}
// Action URL Block
public function dialstatusAction()
{
// Print the Dial Details
$status = $_REQUEST['DialStatus'];
$aleg = $_REQUEST['DialALegUUID'];
$bleg = $_REQUEST['DialBLegUUID'];
echo "Status = $status , Aleg UUID = $aleg , Bleg UUID = $bleg";
}
}
Add a Route
Now, you need to add a route for the dialStatus function in VoiceController class, open the routes/web.php file and add the below line at the end of the file:
Route::match(['get', 'post'], '/dialstatus', 'VoiceController@dialStatus');
Route::match(['get', 'post'], '/dial_action', 'VoiceController@dialstatusAction');
Now the VoiceController is ready to dial out to the number specified in the Dial element and to track dial status reporting, you can use the below command to handle your inbound calls using Laravel and Plivo PHP SDK.
$ php artisan serve
Your local development server will be started and you can test the laravel app for inbound calls via the URL http://127.0.0.1:8000/dialstatus/.
Exposing your local server to the internet
To receive incoming calls and to handle callbacks, your local server should be able to connect with the Plivo API service. Ngrok is a tunneling software used to expose a web server running on your local machine to the internet. Using Ngrok you can set webhooks that can talk to the Plivo server.
You can download and install ngrok from here. Follow the detailed configuration instructions to get started.
Run ngrok on the port which currently hosts your application. For example, if your port number is 8000, run the following command:
$ ./ngrok http 8000
This will give you a UI with links that look like ngrok.io/*
which you can use to access your local server using the public network.
You can check the app in action on https://ff3e00858d94.ngrok.io/dialstatus.
Create an Application
- Create an Application by visiting the Application Page and click on
New Application
. You can also use Plivo’s Application API. - Give your application a name. Let’s call it
Dial Status Report
. Enter your server URL (e.g.http://example.com/dialstatus/
) in theAnswer URL
field and set the method asPOST
. See our Application API docs to learn how to modify your application through our APIs. - Click on
Create
to save your application.
Assign a Plivo number to your app
- Navigate to the Numbers page and select the phone number you want to use for this app.
- Select
Dial Status Report
(name of the app) from the Plivo App dropdown list. - Click on
Update
to save.
Test and validate
Call the Plivo phone number assigned to your app. The calls will be forwarded to the number specified in the dial XML app, also, the call details will be posted to your application server during different call statuses.