{"id":4324,"date":"2017-12-08T06:29:35","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T14:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/?p=4324"},"modified":"2025-06-13T16:52:25","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T23:52:25","slug":"chatbot-azure-couchbase-viber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/chatbot-azure-couchbase-viber\/","title":{"rendered":"Chatbot on Azure and Couchbase for Viber"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A chatbot can be a novel way to interact with users. After writing a post introducing the basics of serverless<\/a>, and also writing a post on writing Azure Functions<\/a>, I decided I would try to build something a little more practical than a “hello, world”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Using a serverless architecture for a chatbot makes sense. Chatbot usage may be sporadic. Usage may peak and drop at various times of the day. By using serverless, you’ll only be paying for the resources and time that you need.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

If you want to follow along, all the source code for this blog post is available on Github<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Viber Chatbot<\/h2>\n
\n
\n

I could have chosen a lot of different platforms to create a chatbot for: Facebook Messenger, Skype, WhatsApp, and more. But I decided to go with Viber<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

In the United States, Viber doesn’t seem to have a huge following, but I’ve been using it a lot. It’s a very handy way to chat with my wife, send pictures, funny GIFs, and so on. I find it to be more reliable and faster than SMS, especially for pictures. I wish everyone in my family was using it! It’s also a nice side effect that Viber is a Couchbase customer<\/a>. They switched from MongoDb to support their growing data needs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Also, Viber’s REST API<\/a> is simple and well documented. Between the use of serverless architecture and Viber’s API, I couldn’t believe how fast I went from 0 to chatbot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Setup<\/h2>\n
\n
\n

First, You’ll need to start by creating a bot in Viber<\/a> (you’ll need a Viber account at some point). Viber will give you an API key that looks something like 30a6470a1c67d66f-4207550bd0f024fa-c4cacb89afc04094<\/code>. You’ll use this in the HTTP headers to authenticate to the Viber API.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Next, create a new Azure Functions solution. I’ve previously blogged about Azure Functions<\/a> with a followup on Lazy Initialization<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

I decided to use C# to write my Azure Functions. Unfortunately, there is no .NET SDK for Viber (as far as I know), so I’ll have to use the REST API directly. Not a big deal, I just used RestSharp<\/a>. But if you prefer NodeJS<\/a> or Python<\/a>, Viber has got you covered with SDKs for those languages.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Before you start coding, you’ll need to setup a Webhook<\/a>. This is simply a way of telling Viber where to send incoming messages. You’ll only need to do this at the beginning. I did this by first deploying a barebones Azure Function that returns a 200. I used Postman to set the initial webhook.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\"Chatbot<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Finally, I setup a Couchbase cluster on Azure. Getting started with Couchbase and Azure is easy and free<\/a>. (You can even use the “Test Drive” button to get 3 hours of Couchbase Server without expending any Azure credit). I created a single user called “viberchatbot”, a bucket called “ViberChatBot”, and I loaded the “travel-sample” bucket.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Azure Function<\/h2>\n
\n
\n

For this application, I wanted to create a chatbot with a little more substance than “Hello, world” and I also wanted to have a little fun. Here are the commands I want my chatbot to understand:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n