Macro : Macro in Asterisk

In Asterisk, a macro is a special kind of context which can be expanded within the definition of another context. Its name must begin with “macro-”.

A macro is expanded by using the Macro command.

All the lines of the macro definition should only use the s extension; the actual extension will come from the line in the calling context on which the macro is expanded.

Macro Life Cycle:

1. Executes a macro using the context macro- name
2. Jumping to the s extension of that context
3. Executing each step
4. Returning when the steps end.

What if, Called Party Hangup while Macro Executing:

If a macro executes a Dial() and the called party hangs up, then the control passes to the ‘h’ extension of the calling context.

is h – extension required in Macro Context:

The ‘h’ extension is still needed inside the Macro context in case of a command, application, or extension exiting non-zero – i.e. the user hangs up in the middle of a Record() – in this case the ‘h’ extension of the Macro context is used, not the ‘h’ extension of the calling context.

Nesting of Macros:

Asterisk Macros are not very good at going several levels deep. It is by design limited to 7 levels deep, although some people tweak it to go many levels deep, and I’ve even seen a crash caused by nesting of macros.

Point to be Noted:

you cannot use any other extension than ‘s’ to construct the macro as control is returned to the calling context when the end of the ‘s,’ priorities is reached.

— Not strictly true. Other extensions can be used (as are used in the examples below), but ‘macro-name,s,1’ is always the starting point. The macro exits when, for the current extension, the priority ‘current priority’ + 1 does not exist (assuming that control would have passed to that priority had it have existed)

key presses within a macro will cause a jump to the calling context and WILL NOT jump to the appropriate extension within the macro context. This is a shame and means code becomes a lot more complex

Reference: -http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+cmd+Macro

[macro-screen]
exten => s,1,Wait(1)
exten => s,n,set(ph=${CALLERID(num):6})
exten => s,n,NoOp(Dial Status:${UNIQUEID})
exten => s,n,Set(CURLOPT(httptimeout)=1)
exten => s,n,Set(CURLOPT(conntimeout)=1)
exten => s,n,set(foo=${CURL(http://192.168.1.6//Connected/${ph}/0/${UNIQUEID})})

[test]

exten => _XXXXXXXXXX,1,Dial(DAHDI/g0/${EXTEN},,M(screen))