ViberChatbot (Uzbunko)

A Flask-based Viber bot server with a plugin architecture for infrastructure automation, IoT control, and monitoring — built for sysadmin use cases.

What It Does

The bot acts as a messaging interface to your server infrastructure. Users send commands via Viber and receive responses from plugins — server status, temperatures, camera snapshots, employee schedules, parking info, UPS status, and more. Access to each plugin is granted per-user via filesystem symlinks, so different users see different capabilities.

Additionally, the bot exposes a webhook endpoint compatible with Alertmanager (and similar tools), so it can receive infrastructure alerts and forward them to Viber instead of Telegram or Slack.

Architecture

viberChatbot.py          # Main Flask app (Blueprint), Viber webhook handler
plugins/                 # Plugin library — one .py file per command
    ping.py              # Ping a list of hosts, report UP/DOWN
    temp.py              # Query server room temperature sensor
    smene.py             # Employee schedule (next 7 days)
    skamere.py           # IP camera live snapshot
    radijacija.py        # Radiation sensor readout
    dust.py              # Air quality visualization from MRTG
    ups.py               # UPS status
    jelovnik.py          # Canteen menu
    racun.py             # Account/billing info
    link.py              # Quick links
    ...                  # Add your own
users/
    u<md5_of_viber_id>/  # Per-user privilege directory
        -> symlink to plugin   # User can call this plugin
script/
    sendViber.py         # CLI tool: send a Viber message from command line
    viberhook.py         # Helper: register/update the Viber webhook
    viberhook_443.py     # Same, for port 443

How Plugins Work

Each plugin is a Python file with a rep(text) generator function:

from viberbot.api.messages.text_message import TextMessage

def rep(text):
    if text.lower().startswith('temp'):
        yield TextMessage(text=get_temperature())
        yield 'stop_'   # stop processing further plugins

The bot iterates through all plugins the user has access to. If the user types help or info, it lists available plugin names instead of executing them.

User Privileges

Access control is filesystem-based. To grant a user access to a plugin:

# 1. Create user directory (Viber ID hashed with MD5)
mkdir users/u$(python3 -c "import hashlib; print(hashlib.md5('VIBER_USER_ID'.encode()).hexdigest())")

# 2. Symlink the plugin into that directory
cd users/u<hash>/
ln -s ../../plugins/ping.py

Users with no symlinks for a given command get a friendly default reply (required by Viber's 5-second response timeout).

Setup

Requirements

pip install flask viberbot requests lxml

Configuration

Edit viberChatbot.py and set:

auth_token = 'YOUR_VIBER_BOT_TOKEN'   # from developers.viber.com
NESHA = 'YOUR_VIBER_ID_BASE64'         # admin user ID

User IDs are stored as hashlib.md5(viber_id.encode()).hexdigest() for the directory name.

Register Webhook

python script/viberhook.py
# or for port 443:
python script/viberhook_443.py

Your server must be reachable over HTTPS (Viber requires a valid SSL certificate).

Run

# viberChatbot.py is a Flask Blueprint — mount it in your main Flask app:
from viberChatbot import uzbunkoBot
app.register_blueprint(uzbunkoBot)

Or use the commented-out standalone block at the bottom of viberChatbot.py to run directly with SSL:

context = ('server.crt', 'server.key')
app.run(host='0.0.0.0', port=8080, debug=True, ssl_context=context)

Sending Messages from the CLI / Scripts

python script/sendViber.py "Server is back up" NESHA USER2

Or via HTTP POST from any script or monitoring tool:

curl -X POST https://yourserver:8080/send \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"password":"your_password","recipients":["NESHA"],"text":"Disk usage at 95%"}'

Generic Webhook → Viber Notification Bridge

A lightweight webhook endpoint that receives generic HTTP POST alerts (e.g. Alertmanager/Prometheus, Grafana, Zabbix, and other monitoring systems) and forwards notifications to Viber.

# alertmanager.yml
receivers:
  - name: viber
    webhook_configs:
      - url: 'https://yourserver:8080/ALERTMyourpassword'

Replace the route path with your own secret. The endpoint parses alert status, labels, and annotations and formats them into a readable Viber message sent to the admin user.

Writing a Plugin

Create a new file in plugins/:

# plugins/mycheck.py
from viberbot.api.messages.text_message import TextMessage

def rep(text):
    if text.lower().startswith('mycheck'):
        result = run_my_check()
        yield TextMessage(text=result)
        yield 'stop_'

Then symlink it into user directories as needed. The plugin name (minus .py) appears in the help output.

Notes

• Built on the Viber Python Bot API
• Duplicate message detection via message_token set
• Rolling log of last 50 non-admin messages, viewable by admins with log command
• Originally written for internal sysadmin use at a broadcast/ISP infrastructure environment

Author

Nebojsa Milovanovic