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nicobot

A collection of 🤟 cool 🤟 chat bots :

  • Transbot is a demo chatbot interface to IBM Watson™ Language Translator service
  • Askbot is a one-shot chatbot that will throw a question and wait for an answer

My bots are cool, but they are absolutely EXPERIMENTAL use them at your own risk !

This project features :

Requirements & installation

Requires :

Install Python dependencies with :

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

See below for Signal requirements.

Transbot

Transbot is a demo chatbot interface to IBM Watson™ Language Translator service.

Again, this is NOT STABLE code, there is absolutely no warranty it will work or not harm butterflies on the other side of the world... Use it at your own risk !

The included sample configuration in test/transbot-sample-conf, demoes how to make it translate any message like nicobot <message> in chinese or simply nicobot <message> (into the current language).

It can also automatically translate messages containing keywords into a random language. The sample configuration shows how to make it translate any message containing "Hello" or "Goodbye" in many languages.

Quick start

  1. Install prerequisites ; for Debian systems this will look like : 
    sudo apt install python3 python3-pip
git clone https://github.com/nicolabs/nicobot.git
cd nicobot
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
  2. Create a Language Translator service instance on IBM Cloud and get the URL and API key from your console
  3. Fill them into test/transbot-sample-conf/config.yml (ibmcloud_url and ibmcloud_apikey)
  4. Run python3 nicobot/transbot.py -C test/transbot-sample-conf
  5. Input Hello world in the console : the bot will print a random translation of "Hello World"
  6. Input Bye nicobot : the bot will terminate

If you want to send & receive messages through Signal instead of reading from the keyboard & printing to the console :

  1. Install and configure signal-cli (see below for details)
  2. Run python3 nicobot/transbot.py -C test/transbot-sample-conf -b signal -U '+33123456789' -r '+34987654321' with -U +33123456789 your Signal number and -r +33987654321 the one of the person you want to make the bot chat with

See dedicated chapters below for more options...

Main configuration options and files

Run transbot.py -h to get a description of all options.

Below are the most important configuration options for this bot (please also check the generic options below) :

  • --keyword and --keywords-file will help you generate the list of keywords that will trigger the bot. To do this, run transbot.py --keyword <a_keyword> --keyword <another_keyword> ... a first time with : this will download all known translations for these keywords and save them into a keywords.json file. Next time you run the bot, don't use the --keyword option : it will reuse this saved keywords list. You can use --keywords-file to change the default name.
  • --languages-file : The first time the bot runs, it will download the list of supported languages into languages.<locale>.json and reuse it afterwards but you can give it a specific file with the set of languages you want. You can use --locale to set the desired locale.
  • --locale will select the locale to use for default translations (with no target language specified) and as the default parsing language for keywords.
  • --ibmcloud-url and --ibmcloud-apikey can be obtained from your IBM Cloud account (create a Language Translator instance then go to the resource list)

The i18n.<locale>.yml file contains localization strings for your locale and fun :

  • Transbot will say "Hello" when started and "Goodbye" before shutting down : you can configure those banners in this file.
  • It also defines the pattern that terminates the bot.

A sample configuration is available in the test/transbot-sample-conf/ directory.

Askbot

Askbot is a one-shot chatbot that will throw a question and wait for an answer.

Again, this is NOT STABLE code, there is absolutely no warranty it will work or not harm butterflies on the other side of the world... Use it at your own risk !

When run, it will send a message (if provided) and wait for an answer, in different ways (see options below). Once the conditions are met, the bot will terminate and print the result in JSON format. This JSON structure will have to be parsed in order to retrieve the answer and determine what were the exit(s) condition(s).

Main configuration options

Run askbot.py -h to get a description of all options.

Below are the most important configuration options for this bot (please also check the generic options below) :

  • --max-count will define how many messages to read at maximum before exiting. This allows the recipient to send several messages in answer. However currently all of those messages are returned at once after they all have been read by the bot so they cannot be parsed on the fly. To give x tries to the recipient, run x times this bot instead.
  • --pattern defines a pattern that will end the bot when matched. It takes 2 arguments : a symbolic name and a regular expression pattern that will be tested against each message. It can be passed several times in the same command line, hence the <name> argument, which will allow identifying which pattern(s) matched.

Sample configuration can be found in test/askbot-sample-conf.

Example

The following command will :

  • Send the message "Do you like me" to +34987654321 on Signal

  • Wait for a maximum of 3 messages in answer and return

  • Or return immediately if one message matches one of the given patterns labeled 'yes', 'no' or 'cancel'

    python3 askbot.py -m "Do you like me ?" -p yes '(?i)\b(yes|ok)\b' -p no '(?i)\bno\b' -p cancel '(?i)\b(cancel|abort)\b' --max-count 3 -b signal -U '+33123456789' --recipient '+34987654321'

If the user +34987654321 would reply "I don't know" then "Ok then : NO !", the output would be :

{
    "max_responses": false,
    "messages": [{
        "message": "I don't know...",
        "patterns": [{
            "name": "yes",
            "pattern": "(?i)\\b(yes|ok)\\b",
            "matched": false
        }, {
            "name": "no",
            "pattern": "(?i)\\bno\\b",
            "matched": false
        }, {
            "name": "cancel",
            "pattern": "(?i)\\b(cancel|abort)\\b",
            "matched": false
        }]
    }, {
        "message": "Ok then : NO !",
        "patterns": [{
            "name": "yes",
            "pattern": "(?i)\\b(yes|ok)\\b",
            "matched": true
        }, {
            "name": "no",
            "pattern": "(?i)\\bno\\b",
            "matched": true
        }, {
            "name": "cancel",
            "pattern": "(?i)\\b(cancel|abort)\\b",
            "matched": false
        }]
    }]
}

A few notes about the example : in -p yes '(?i)\b(yes|ok)\b' :

  • (?i) enables case-insensitive match
  • \b means "edge of a word" ; it is used to make sure the wanted text will not be part of another word (e.g. tik tok would match ok otherwise)
  • Note that a search is done on the messages (not a match) so it is not required to specify a full expression with ^ and $ (though you may if you want). This makes the pattern more readable.
  • The pattern is labeled 'yes' so it can easily be identified in the JSON output and checked for a positive match

Also you can notice the importance to define patterns that don't overlap (here the message matched both 'yes' and 'no') or to handle unknow states.

You could parse the output with a script, or with a command-line client like jq. For instance, to get the name of the matched patterns in Python :

output = json.loads('{ "max_responses": false, "messages": [...] }')
matched = [ p['name'] for p in output['messages'][-1]['patterns'] if p['matched'] ]

It will return the list of the names of the patterns that matched the last message ; e.g. ['yes','no'] in our above example.

Generic instructions

Main generic options

The following options are common to both bots :

  • --config-file and --config-dir let you change the default configuration directory and file. All configuration files will be looked up from this directory ; --config-file allows overriding the location of config.yml.
  • --backend selects the chatter system to use : it currently supports "console" and "signal" (see below)
  • --username selects the account to use to send and read message ; its format depends on the backend
  • --recipient and --group select the recipient (only one of them should be given) ; its format depends on the backend
  • --stealth will make the bot connect and listen to messages but print any answer instead of sending it ; useful to observe the bot's behavior in a real chatroom...

Config.yml configuration file

Options can also be taken from a configuration file : by default it reads the config.yml file in the current directory but can be changed with the --config-file and --config-dir options. This file is in YAML format with all options at root level. Keys have the same name as command line options, with middle dashes - replaced with underscores _ and a s appended for lists (options --ibmcloud-url https://api... will become ibmcloud_url: https://api... and --keywords-file 1.json --keywords-file 2.json will become :

keywords_files:
    - 1.json
    - 2.json

See also sample configurations in the test/ directory.

Please first review YAML syntax if you don't know about YAML.

Using the Jabber/XMPP backend

By using --backend jabber you can make the bot chat with XMPP (a.k.a. Jabber) users.

Jabber-specific options

  • --username and --password are the JabberID (e.g. myusername@myserver.im) and password of the bot's account, used to send and read messages. If either parameter is missing, will try to read jid and password from ~/.xtalk file.
  • --recipient is the JabberID of the person to send the message to

Using the Signal backend

By using --backend signal you can make the bot chat with Signal users.

Prerequistes

You must first install and configure signal-cli.

Then you must register or link the computer when the bot will run ; e.g. :

signal-cli link --name MyComputer

Please see the man page for more details.

Signal-specific options

With signal, make sure :

  • the --username parameter is your phone number in international format (e.g. +33123456789). In config.yml, make sure to put quotes around it to prevent YAML thinking it's an integer (because of the 'plus' sign)
  • specify either --recipient as an international phone number or --group with a base 64 group ID (e.g. --group "mABCDNVoEFGz0YeZM1234Q=="). Once registered with Signal, you can list the IDs of the groups you are in with signal-cli -U +336123456789 listGroups

Sample command line to run the bot with Signal :

python3 nicobot/transbot.py -b signal -U +33612345678 -g "mABCDNVoEFGz0YeZM1234Q==" --ibmcloud-url https://api.eu-de.language-translator.watson.cloud.ibm.com/instances/a234567f-4321-abcd-efgh-1234abcd7890 --ibmcloud-apikey "f5sAznhrKQyvBFFaZbtF60m5tzLbqWhyALQawBg5TjRI"

Resources

IBM Cloud

Signal

Jabber

Python libraries :