About

Backend API service for YouTube chat history written in NestJS. Requires a configured MongoDB instance to connect to.

Swagger documents will also be generated automatically when running.

This was started as a practice project to learn NestJS and JS/TS in general. Some things about it may strange or incorrect, feel free to point out any issues.

Limitations

Currently, this supports one Youtube channel per active process, determined by the YTCHAT_CHANNELID environment variable.

This means supporting multiple channels will require multiple containers each with their own port.

Also, the swagger documentation is currently auto-generated and needs to be filled out more clearly.

Installation

# from the source directory
$ npm install

Configuration

Before launching, set any necessary environment variables.

# bash
YTCHAT_CHANNELID=...

# powershell
$env:YTCHAT_CHANNELID = "..."

Supported variables

Variable	Purpose	Default
YTCHAT_CHANNELID	Which MongoDB collection should be queried.	UCrPseYLGpNygVi34QpGNqpA (Ludwig)
YTCHAT_BACKEND_PORT	Which port the backend API should listen on.	3000
YTCHAT_BACKEND_MONGOSTRING	The MongoDB Connection String. The DB is selected with the above YTCHAT_CHANNELID env variable.	'mongodb://user:password@127.0.0.1:27017'

API Keys/Authentication

The backend uses API keys with associated permissions for authentication. Each channel DB should have a collection called users that stores these API keys/permisisons. There's currently no built-in method for generating keys/permissions, so they will have to be inserted into the DB manually.

An example user (in JSON format) is as follows:

{
  "name": "user's name",
  "apikey": "any_unique_string",
  "isAdmin": false,
  "perms": {
    "view": true,
    "comment": false,
  }
}

Permissions:

isAdmin: Should override all other permissions, and allow full access to viewing/commenting/etc.
view: Can read chat history for users/perform queries on the filtered page.
comment: Can leave mod comments for users.

Running the app

# development
$ npm run start

# watch mode
$ npm run start:dev

# production mode
$ npm run start:prod

Testing

This was started as a personal practice project, so I didn't write any unit tests even though I definitely should have.

NestJS will generate some boilerplate unit tests if you'd like to add some, feel free to submit a pull request if so!

Support

Feel free to submit any issues or pull requests. No warranty or support is guaranteed beyond that.

License

This code is under the MIT license.