SPA Phone XML Documentation

[edwardforgacs]

Could someone please provide the Cisco reference guide for the XML API on the SPA series phones.

The documentation at

https://developer.cisco.com/site/ip-phone-services/overview/

does not reference the SPA series phones at all.

Specifically I am after a feature table which explains the supported XML objects & APIs on the XML Series phones. I am assuming that this document actually exists because the XML API is referred to in the marketing documentation for the SPA series phones.

[Dan Lukes]

No such document exists as far as I know. XML API needs to be considered undocumented on SPA series phones (thus it is somewhat risky to use it in production)..

Start with the documentation you referred, then continue with resources referred within XML Services for SPA50x and SPA303 IP Phones: Documentation

Carefully test all features you are wish to use - most of documents available are rather old and there has been some changes with most recent firmwares.

[edwardforgacs]

Thanks very much, that is much appreciated. There are some really good links there.

As it appears the getDeviceCaps API is not supported (also based on my testing), I don't suppose there is any way to actually detect that you are dealing with an SPA series phone from any response from the phone?

I have noticed the returned HTTP header format is slightly different but this would basically require testing with every single phone model to ascertain if that is actually a reliable way of detecting the phone model.

[Dan Lukes]

You know devices connected in your network, isn't it ? Or anyone can bring it's own device, unknown to you, and you wish to speak XSI to it ? It sounds suspicious.

Well, there's no reliable way to detect model and firmware version just with XSI (as far as I know).

You are true, it may be possible to detect by finger printing. Not I have no experience with it as I need not to detect phone parameters. I know everything about devices connected.

[edwardforgacs]

The situation is a legitimate app which controls a remote phone, for example dialling a number. The user specifies the phone they want to control, nothing suspicious.

I realise the user could also be asked to specify the model of the phone, but for other Cisco phones this is not necessary as the getDeviceCaps API provides the required info.

[Dan Lukes]

Yes, I understand, I'm just surprised you don't know what's phone is connected in your network unless user disclose it to you.

In our network is not allowed to use phones unknown to us. Unknown phone will not be allowed to register to PBX, even IP address will not be assigned to it. If phone gets registered, then it's phone fully known to us - not only model and firmware version, but also it's exact configuration (not so surprising - we provisioned configuration into it).

I'm not saying there's something wrong on your side - I has been just surprised a lot you have connected phones not known to you.

But forget it, it's not the matter. Answer is still the same - HTTP request headers are your's only chance to identify unknown device.