Viber Setup

Enabling Viber Channels

To enable Viber channels, you can start either from new or existing Bottender apps.

New Bottender Apps

Create Bottender App is the best way to start building a new app in Bottender.

To create a project, run:

npx create-bottender-app my-app

Make sure to select the viber option:

After you go through the steps, bottender.config.js and .env are generated automatically for further channel settings.

Existing Bottender Apps

First, you must have a bottender.config.js file includes the following settings:

module.exports = {
  channels: {
    viber: {
      enabled: true,
      path: '/webhooks/viber',
      accessToken: process.env.VIBER_ACCESS_TOKEN,
      sender: {
        name: 'Sender Name',
      },
    },
  },
};

Make sure to set the channels.viber.enabled field to true.

By default, the Bottender server listens to the Viber requests on the /webhooks/viber path. However, you can overwrite the path by assigning the preferred webhook path in the channels.viber.path field.

We highly recommend setting your sensitive config using process.env, so you could avoid any credentials get exposed.

You can find more information about sender field on Viber's official document, General Send Message Parameters.

Environment Configuration

Bottender utilizes the dotenv package to load your environment variables when developing your app.

To make a Viber bot work, you must prepare the following environment variable, which you may put into your .env file later:

• Viber Access Token

Viber Access Token

After you find your Viber Authentication Token on Viber Admin Panel, paste the value into the VIBER_ACCESS_TOKEN field in your .env file:

# .env

VIBER_ACCESS_TOKEN=<Your Viber Authentication Token>

For more information, see Viber's official document, Authentication Token.

Webhook

After finishing above settings, you can start your server with Viber webhook event listening using the following commands:

# in production mode
npm start

# or in development mode
npm run dev

When you run bottender in development mode, Bottender automatically run up a ngrok client, and then you can get the information of webhook URL from the console like this:

App has started
viber webhook URL: https://42bbf602.ngrok.io/webhooks/viber
server is running on 5000 port...

Then, you can finish your Viber webhook setting with the following command.

npx bottender viber webhook set

Now you are ready to interact with your bot on Viber.