README.md

   1 # Unnamed Youtube Frontend
   2
   3 Note: this is a work in progress, still unreleased software. Feel free to look around, but keep in mind that this repository will move servers for its public release.
   4
   5 Contributors wanted! Please send me an email (see commit log) or contact `girst` on irc.freenode.net (hanging out in `#invidious` for now)
   6
   7 Test Instance: http://delta.gir.st:8000/ (will move in the future)
   8
   9 TODO:
  10  - reorganize using departmental flask blueprints:
  11    forces decoupling of all youtube <-> reddit and allows 3rd party extensions
  12    - reddit blueprint:
  13      - user should be able to subscribe to subreddits
  14      - show a frontpage-like feed, pin/hide videos (linking their reddit comments)
  15  - abstract database access
  16    we want to be able to choose between at least sqlite and postgres
  17  - implement 'dangerous' functions as disablable blueprint
  18    - search through invidious-api
  19    - proxy for subtitles, hls/dash manifests, ...
  20      - subtitles on /watch
  21      - hls.js for livestreams
  22    - proxy for geolocked videos?
  23  - modern css frontend (flexbox)
  24  - document all the things
  25  - quality of life improvements:
  26    - asynchronically call update-subs and pull-subs on subscribing, iff necessary
  27    - get_video_info on incoming websub-webhook to get exact published date
  28  - development-friendly error handling:
  29    - log unkown info/endcards to file
  30    - save get_video_info/reddit.json/etc with traceback
  31  - proper support for sponsorblock (cached db?)
  32  - cleanups:
  33    - remove jsonify()
  34    - fix all the TODOs and XXXs
  35  - find a name!
  36
  37 wishlist:
  38  - proxy googlevideo (and probably thumnails) responses
  39
  40 # Installation
  41
  42 see INSTALL file
  43
  44 # Usage
  45
  46 Since user authentication is not yet implemented, users are for now identified by a randomized token. To "log in", just visit `/feed/subscriptions?token=....`. at the bottom, click 'Manage Subscriptions' and paste the UC...-URLs of channels you want to subscribe to.
  47
  48 If no token is specified, it defaults to `guest`. Since this is a readonly account, you can populate it by directly writing into the database:
  49
  50 first, prepare a file (guest.csv) of channel ids like so:
  51     UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,guest,channel
  52 then from the sqlite3 console, issue:
  53     .mode csv
  54     .import guest.csv subscriptions
  55
  56
  57 # Notes
  58  - caching external api requests
  59    currently using in-memory-backend, which is purged every 10minutes. a real installation should use redis, which should scale better and handle purging for us.
  60    the in-memory cache conflicts with gunicorn's worker model: which is a sepreate process for each request. switch to mulitple gthreads on a single worker to avoid getting the cache torn down after every request (note that threads may leak memory, if my observations from $dayjob are still valid).
  61  - neater sqlite output:
  62     .mode column
  63     .headers on