ChargerS

ChargerS is a CGRateS subsystem designed to produce billing runs via DerivedCharging mechanism.

It works as standalone component of CGRateS, accessible via CGRateS RPC via a rich set of APIs. As input ChargerS is capable of receiving generic events (hashmaps) with dynamic types for fields.

ChargerS is an important part of the charging process within CGRateS since with no ChargingProfile matching, there will be no billing run performed.

DerivedCharging

Is a process of receiving an event as input and deriving that into multiples (unlimited) out. The derived event will be a standalone clone of original with possible modifications of individual event fields. In case of billing, this will translate into multiple Events or CDRs being billed simultaneously for the same input.

Processing logic

For the received Event we will retrieve the list of matching ChargingProfiles’ via :ref:`FilterS`. These profiles will be then ordered based on their *Weight - higher Weight will have more priority. If no profile will match due to Filter or ActivationInterval, NOT_FOUND will be returned back to the RPC client.

Each ChargingProfile matching the Event will produce a standalone event based on configured RunID. These events will each have a special field added (or overwritten), the RunID, which is taken from the applied ChargingProfile.

If AttributeIDs are different than *none, the newly created Event will be sent to [AttributeS](AttributeS) and fields replacement will be performed based on the logic there. If the AttributeIDs is populated, these profile IDs will be selected directly for faster processing, otherwise (if empty) the AttributeProfiles will be selected using FilterS.

Parameters

ChargerProfile

A ChargerProfile is the configuration producing the DerivedCharging for the Event received. It’s made of the following fields:

Tenant

Is the tenant on the platform (one can see the tenant as partition ID)

ID

Identifier for the ChargerProfile, unique within a Tenant.

FilterIDs

List of FilterProfiles which should match in order to consider the ChargerProfile matching the event.

ActivationInterval

Is the time interval when this profile becomes active. If undefined, the profile is always active. Other options are start time, end time or both.

RunID

The identifier for a single bill run / charged output Event.

AttributeIDs

List of AttributeProfileIDs which will be applied for the output Event in order to change some of it’s fields. If empty, the list is discovered via [FilterS](FilterS) (AttributeProfiles matching the event). If *none, no AttributeProfile will be applied, event will be a simple clone of the one at input with just *RunID being different.

Weight

Used in case of multiple profiles matching an event. The higher, the better (0 has lowest possible priority).

Use cases

  • Calculating standard charges for the Customer calling as well as for the Reseller/Distributor. One can build chains of charging rules if multiple Resellers are involved.

  • Calculating revenue based on Customer vs Supplier pricing.

  • Calculating pricing for multiple Suppliers for revenue protection.

  • Adding local vs mobile charges for premium numbers when accessed from mobile headsets.

  • etc.