Cisco XML Services Framework

Over the past several months a great deal of further efforts have been put into the ‘CiscoIPPhone‘ framework, previously discussed the ‘Cisco XML Framework Concept‘ post. All the hard work has finally paid off as the framework’s first release version has been completed. The CiscoIPPhone Framework is now available for download (see below).

This first release version is currently available without documentation as it is not yet complete.

There are also a few significant changes made to the projects design and the overall organization of the framework. The most significant change brought into the project was added very late in its development. As the objects grew and the framework took its shape, it seemed both natural and imperative to make provisions for the concept of global framework functionality. The idea being to have a space within the framework for functionality and controls less related to individual service objects but still applicable to the framework as a whole.

Another change to note for testers and developers is the option on all service objects to apply an XSLT file directly to service objects to retrieve the formatted results of the transformation. As the more interactive components of the framework were being added, testing processes found it useful to make the XML service objects usable in a web browser. As more and more framework objects were tested, it was deemed relevant enough to be included in the base CiscoXMLService superclass object.

As a result of the inclusion of an XSL transformation function and the thorough testing of all object functions, a robust XSL stylesheet template was created by testers to transform all usable service objects into corresponding, formatted HTML markup. Not all objects could be tested in this way as some rely on the Cisco IP Phone firmware to be run correctly (Execute objects for example). It is the intention of the developers and the testers to make the resulting XSL stylesheet available to the public as well.

INSTALLATION:

To install the framework, unpack the archived file. Copy the ‘CiscoIPPhone‘ folder to the webserver’s PHP include location. NOTE: This framework requires PHP 5.

USAGE:

Once installed in the PHP include directory, add the code:

require_once(‘CiscoIPPhone/Framework.php’);

This will make all of the objects in the framework available.

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