ytcw - YouTube Channel Watcher

About

ytcw is a program that calls yt-dlp to fetch channel information (videos and shorts), store it in a PostgreSQL database, and provide REST API endpoints.

I really like the Holodex project, but it mostly tracks VTuber clippers. I just wanted to see the VTubers’ own content (or some channels that only follow certain YouTubers).
You can follow channels on Holodex, but I haven’t found a way to filter out live streams.
This project isn’t limited to the VTuber community - you can use it to fetch any YouTube channel.

Quick start

Create a database in PostgreSQL, then edit the config file to fit your needs.

First, create a config file at /etc/ytcw/config.toml
For an example, see the default config file: config/config.toml

ytcw migrate # Run database migrations (does not create the database itself)

ytcw add-channel -i @MoriCalliope -c Hololive # Add a YouTube channel with a category

ytcw serve # Start the REST API server

ytcw daemon # Start the fetcher daemon

The database columns and API fields are mostly aligned with the yt-dlp JSON output.

More information can be found in the docs file.

Auto-generated Swagger documentation can be found in the docs/ folder or at the /swagger/ URL (the trailing slash is important).

systemd service files

Modify these files to suit your own setup, pay special attention to the User and Group options.
It’s also expected that the software is installed in /usr/local/bin/ folder.

[Unit]
Description=ytcw fetcher daemon
After=network.target
Requires=network-online.target

[Service]
Restart=always
RestartSec=5
Type=exec
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/ytcw daemon
User=foo
Group=foo

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

[Unit]
Description=ytcw API server
After=network.target
Requires=network-online.target

[Service]
Restart=always
RestartSec=1
Type=exec
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/ytcw serve
User=foo
Group=foo

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Copy the service files into /etc/systemd/system/ and then run:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

sudo systemctl enable --now ytcw.service

sudo systemctl enable --now ytcw-api.service

If you make any changes to the config file, please restart the services using systemd.

Frontend

• ytcw-frontend

Example caddy file:

example.com {
        # ytcw server

        root * /var/www/example.com

        encode zstd gzip

        file_server

        reverse_proxy /api/* :4040

        log {
                # log file optionally, see the Caddy docs
        }
        
        header {
                # additional headers, if you need them
        }
}

Just put the built (ng build) files in the /var/www/example.com folder.

Development

You can set up a local configuration inside the config/ folder named config.local.toml and override only the settings you need, such as the database password.