Listening to a broadcaster designated moderator's chat messages

Extensions
1

Technical Feasibility Question

Hello Twitch Team,

I am working on a IRL Scoreboard Twitch Extension project which will allow a broadcaster to manually update a score in the live configuration, and display these updates (increments or decrements) in real-time via an overlay of a current Twitch Stream. Ideally the streamer will have someone around to manage their live configuration page to update the score during a game, but I can foresee some users not. In these scenarios, I would like the broadcaster to have an option to designate a moderator by their channel ID to update the scoreboard through entering specific formatted messages to the Stream’s chat which will be listened to.

I would like to know if it’s technically feasible to do the following with a Twitch Extension:

  1. Allow a broadcaster to enter a specific moderator’s channel ID into an input in the config.html step for the Extension, which will be stored within the Configuration Service.

  2. When the moderator, who must be logged in to be authorized by the Twitch helper, views the stream, a comparison can be done on their channel ID and the one the broadcaster entered in the configuration step. I then store their opaque user ID to listen to their chat messages.

  3. With an EBS and PubSub, listen to and receive the designated viewer with the role of moderator’s chat messages (with whisper- as the listen target).

  4. Update the Configuration service broadcast value (using set) from the EBS with the increment or decrement specified by the moderator, and then update the overlay which other viewers see during the live stream.

So having the moderator selected by the broadcaster be found by channel ID and then listen to their chat messages by their opaque user ID, updating the score based on their messages.

I currently plan on testing this JWT payload to try and listen to a specific user’s messages:

{
  "exp": 1484242525,
  "opaque_user_id": "UG12X345T6J78",
  "channel_id": "moderator_channel",
  "role": "moderator",
  "is_unlinked": "false",
  "pubsub_perms": {
    "listen": [ "broadcast", "whisper-UG12X345T6J78" ]
  }
}

In going through documentation, I may have confused myself on a plethora of things. It seems the viewer helper is solely for checking the subscription status of a viewer, and the window.Twitch.ext.viewer.onChanged cannot be used to check their messages. It also seems that the PubSub is only for listening based on specific topics opposed to listening to any message a specified user puts in the chat.

Would such a feature be technically feasible? If so, do I need PubSub or would an EBS be enough? Do I even need an EBS to only listen to messages (no sending anticipated) which is done on the frontend?

Just looking for guidance on this to clear my thinking and understand generally if this is feasible. Let me know if anything was confusing so that I can clarify my thoughts for you.

2

I wouldn’t use chat messages.

The extension UI (in the viewer view) could be used instead as the JWT declares if a user is a moderator of the channel or not. (as you have found)

The the Extension UI HTTP POSTs to your EBS with the JWT, validate the JWT then call Config Service/PubSub as needed.

No need to read chat at all. and IMO no need to pre select the moderator, just validate an incoming JWT

TLDR yes thats correct.

Extensions cannot access Twitch Chat via the helper.

3

Thanks for the assistance with this Barry. Sorry for the lengthy question here. I will take your advice and use the JWT to know who the moderator is. Thanks for clarifying everything man!

I see I can conditionally render UI in the viewer based on the JWT. That solution is even better. Thanks for expanding my view (no pun intended) to that!

4

Never a problem makes it clearer what you are trying to do!

This says “adding a point of failiure”/“adding another system” when you can just “reuse” what you present the broadcast to setting numbers. Or big massive +1/-1 buttons, since extensions can be popped out to a new window.

Of course if you didn’t want to put conditional logic into the view, it’s simple enough to build a little external dashboard for mods to login to as well, so theres that option.

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5

Awesome! Your suggestions make sense and keeps in line with the DRY methodology for coding. I will try the conditional UI for the viewer with moderator as their role, but I should also review the option to build an external dashboard for mods. The external dashboard allows the broadcaster to further ensure only the intended moderator can make updates. Its sort of like a REMI use case for a Twitch extension in a way, with the editor of the extension being remote relative to the broadcaster who uses it.

Going to plan out the best path forward now.

Thanks again Barry! This definitely helped unblock me.

6

One last thing, is there any recent code sample for setting up a EBS with Node.js or will the older ones found on the Twitch Dev Github suffice?

7

You can build your EBS however you want with or without the examples.

Depending on what you are doing and what you need.

If you are posting up the JWT from the frontend to the backen then verify it so you can secure the traffic, using whatever JWT library you fancy.

Not sure which examples you are looking at, but I tend to use middleware for express as part of my verification/security strat when working in node.

1 Like