Viber Command Bot

This is a small Python project to get familiar with Viber messaging service.

• Viber

The project uses Viber Python Bot API to send and receive messages.

• python-bot-api

Check API documentation about how to setup bot accounts.

• get-started

Viber command bot

Repository viber-command-bot contains a simple Viber bot that receives commands from a trusted Viber user. Bot executes the configured command and returns the answer. As a security measure, the bot will not use any information received from the user as input to the commands.

Installation

The current implementation is tested in Ubuntu 18.04 with Python 3.6. First, install Python 3, nginx and uWSGI packages. Also, redis is needed for cache:

sudo apt -y install python3 python3-setuptools python3-pip
sudo apt -y install nginx uwsgi uwsgi-plugin-python3
sudo apt -y install redis python3-redis

Install viber-bot-python:

pushd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/Viber/viber-bot-python.git
cd viber-bot-python
python3 ./setup.py build
sudo python3 ./setup.py install
popd

Install viber-command-bot:

pushd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/tklikifi/viber-command-bot.git
cd viber-command-bot
sudo pip3 install -r requirements.txt
python3 ./setup.py build
sudo python3 ./setup.py install
popd

sudo python3 ./setup.py install command will do the following:

• Installs Python modules, scripts and configuration files.
• Creates user viber, if it does not exist.
• Creates group viber, if it does not exist.
• Sets directory /etc/viber owner to viber:viber.
• Sets the owner of configuration files in /etc/viber to viber:viber.
• Sets permissions of /etc/viber directory to 750.
• Sets permissions of configuration files in /etc/viber directory to 640.

The bot will run as user viber.

Edit bot configuration file /etc/viber/viber-command-bot.conf to include the following options in Viber configuration block:

• authentication_token - authentication token for the public Viber bot account
• name - bot name shown in the message
• avatar - image URL for bot avatar
• webhook - webhook URL of the bot
• notify_user_id - user id who receives notifications from the bot
• trusted_user_ids - list of user ids that are allowed to send messages to the bot
• redis_channel - channel used as message cache in Redis

Also, add the commands you want the bot to execute.

Add the following lines to /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:

location = /viber-command-bot { rewrite ^ /viber-command-bot/; }
location /viber-command-bot { try_files $uri @viber-command-bot; }
location @viber-command-bot {
    include uwsgi_params;
    uwsgi_pass unix:/var/run/viber/viber-command-bot.sock;
}

Enable bot in systemd and start the service:

sudo systemctl enable viber-command-bot.service
sudo systemctl start viber-command-bot.service
sudo viber-command-bot-register

Send Viber message

A small Python script viber-send-message can be used for sending messages to Viber users that have subscribed to public Viber bot account, e.g.:

viber-send-message 'Hello there!'
viber-send-message --user-id userid 'Hello there!'
viber-send-message --media http://example.com/image.jpg 'Here is my image!'

If no user-id is given, the configured notify_user_id is used.

User account that wants to send Viber messages must belong to viber group:

sudo usermod -a -G viber user

Receive Viber messages

A small Python script viber-receive-messages can be used for following message to and from the bot:

viber-receive-messages

Daemon process viber-command-executor can be used for executing commands. It is useful for example when redis, nginx and viber-command-bot are run in separate docker containers.

viber-command-executor