Project: Making a SIP GUI test harness with Grails and SIPP – Part I

Making a SIP GUI Test Harness – Part I

Introduction

Part I will cover:

• The Introduction
• Setting up SIPP scenarios
• Creating a Grails project
• Creating Grails Domain Classes and Controllers

In VOIP, the term SIP refers to Session Initiation Protocol.  It’s a protocol that allows voice communication via online connections.  Many phone calls are themselves SIP at some point.

If you currently test SIP, you probably use tools like SIPP.  SIPP is the most common tool I know of. It’s open source, very diverse in functionality, and has a large following of contributors.  SIPP is typically used to generate load tests – like driving 50 calls per second, to a switch.  But SIPP can also be used for functional tests as well.

Audience for this Tutorial

• SIPP is installed and running
• Familiar with some scripting/programming (I’ll be very detailed on basics of groovy/grails)
• A basic understanding of automation
• A basic understanding of VOIP 
• You have an environment with a soft switch (FreeSwitch, Asterix… or a sip server like Berkeke, OpenSIPS, etc.) that we can route calls through.

End Results

By the end of this tutorial, you should have a working UI that will take a phone number and proxy (sip server) – dial the number via the proxy on submit and validate if the call passed or failed.  You will also have the foundation on which to build other test criteria, such as voice analysis and load testing.

Basically by the end of this demonstration you should be able to do this with Grails:

• Be able to create a Grails Project
• Know how to create controllers
• Know how to create services and why they’re cool
• Set up Domain Classes

SIPP Basics

While SIPP automates these phone calls, it’s use is manual.   That is, you create a XML file that builds the scenario. You then type a command line, like:

sipp [phone number] [switch] -sf [path to xml scenario file] -l [limit the amount of calls to this value] -r [limit the rate of calls] -trace_err

SIP Automation

That’s great for one off tests, what if you want something run often by a chron job or by other people who may not know SIPP’s depth of command line properties?

What if you wanted to integrate functionality with SIPP to do things like Audio Analysis, or to iterate through a collection of tests?

That’s why I created a test harness. 

My first SIP Test Harness was written with shell scripts.  It worked, but it put my work all over the place. I had one shell script to do a phone call, another to do complex audio analysis, another to do packet captures, etc.

I’ve improved on this, and in the process got a UI thrown in for free.  

What is Grails and Why Use It

Grails is a MVC architecture for Groovy. MVC stands for Model View and Controller.  It’s a design system that offers a quick way to generate code.  It makes use of domain models, hibernate, plugins and much more – to give a rich tool set.

You’ll get the UI for free.  Grails will generate UI’s for you and we can modify the static scaffolding to suite our needs.

Groovy and Grails (much like Ruby and Rails) is very simplistic and will allow you to write complex applications with very little code.  You can parse JSON with a line of code, or generate CRUD (create, read, update, delete) actions instantly with a command line.  It’s fast and rapid development that truly suits tools development.

Why Grails? Why not Rails?  
No particular reason.  The benefit of Grails is that it compiles down to Java Byte Code so it runs where there is Java. Also Java developers can easily read it … and there is the benefit of having more people who can update the code as needed.  

Technology Used

• SIPP (make sure you have that installed – you’ll need linux or MacOSX
• Tomcat (I’ll use Tomcat, but you can feel free to use Jetty or something else)
• Grails (For grails you’ll need Java installed, as well as groovy, and you’ll want to have an IDE.  A free IDE is the Groovy Grails Tools Suite from SpringSource: http://www.springsource.org/groovy-grails-tool-suite-download A better choice IMO is the commercial version of Intellij.  But either will work.  This tutorial will use Intellij.
• SoftSwitch that we can route calls through (Asterix, FreeSwitch, etc.)

Test Harness Requirements

Create a Grails Project

 grails create-app siptesting

class OutboundCall {
   static constraints = {

   }
}

Date dateCreated
String carrier
String results
String ipProxy
String phone
String pass

  
dateCreated nullable: true
carrier inList: ['Sprint','Verizon','Tcast']
results maxSize: 50000, nullable: true, display: false
ipProxy blank: false
phone blank: false
pass nullable: true, display: false

 
class OutboundCall{

    Date dateCreated
    String carrier
    String results
    String ipProxy
    String phone
    String pass

    static constraints = {
        dateCreated nullable: true
        carrier inList: ['Sprint','TCast','Verizon']
        results maxSize: 5000000, nullable: true, display: false
        ipProxy blank: false
        phone blank: false
        pass nullable: true, display: false
    }
    static mapping = {
        results type: 'text'
    }
}