Hi folks, in this blog we will build a Node.js video streaming application in like 10 minutes. Prerequisite install Node.js on your computer What is streaming? Streams are collections of data — just like arrays or strings. The difference is that streams might not be available all at once, and they don’t have to fit in memory. This makes streams really powerful when working with large amounts of data, or data that’s coming from an external source one chunk at a time. Setup [ 1 ] - getting started 1 - create a folder and name it 2 - initialize npm in your project vido-streaming npm init -y 3 - install these packages dependencies. #### npm install express development dependencies. npm install -D nodemon add this script to your file. package.json "start": "nodemon index.js" Setup [2]  - setup Node.js server 1 - create file in your project root.
2 - add this code below index.js const express = require("express");

const app = express(); // setup express application
const PORT = process.env.PORT || 3000;

app.listen(PORT, () => {
  console.log("SERVER STARTED AT PORT: " + PORT);
}); This code starts web server using framework and listening to port: . express 3000 Setup [3] - serving html page Now we want to serve an html page with a video element to the Frontend. 1 - create folder in your project root.
2 - create file in created folder ( ) and add this html code. public index.html public <html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    <title>Home | Video Streaming</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <video 
    controls 
    src="/video" 
    id="video-stream" 
    poster="/poster.jpeg" 
    width="700"
    >
	</video>
  </body>
</html> :  Specifies that video controls should be displayed (such as a play/pause button etc). controls : Specifies the URL of the video file. src : Specifies an image to be shown while the video is downloading, or until the user hits the play button. poster Serving html file we need to send the html page to the users. add this code below in file. index.js app.get("/", (req, res) => {
try {
	res.sendFile(__dirname + "/public/index.html");
} catch (err) {
	res.status(500).send("internal server error occurred")
}
}); what that code does, is listening to get request in base URL of the application, when it get the response will be send file by using and first parameter is  html file path. sendFile note: is the root path of the current directory. __dirname Serving poster image - setup [4] Poster is image will be shown until the video is downloaded or the user clicks the video. Note: you need to any image you want in a public directory that you make. See the code below app.get("/:file_name", (req, res) => {
	try {
		res.sendFile(__dirname + req.params.file_name);
	} catch (err) {
		res.status(500).send("internal server error occurred");
	}
}); Streaming video - setup[5] and final Import required node.js modules When streaming the video we need to import two Node.js build-in libraries at the top of the file. const  fs = require("fs");
const  path = require("path"); : allows you to work with the file system on your computer. To include the File System module. fs file system module : . The path module has many useful properties and methods to access and manipulate paths in the file system. path allows you to interact with file paths easily Setup video API function Add this code before the Serving Poster Image function because Nodejs will go throw the express middlewares and if the requested URL is it will match the Serving Poster Image middleware, not the video middleware. /video Note: you need to add a random video in the public file. app.get("/video", (req, res) => {
// indicates the part of a document that the server should return
// on this measure in bytes for example: range = 0-6 bytes.
const  range = req.headers.range;
if (!range) res.status(400).send("Range must be provided");

const  videoPath = path.join(__dirname, "public", "video.mp4");
// extract video size by using statSyn()
const  videoSize = fs.statSync(videoPath).size;
// 10 powered by 6 equal 1000000bytes = 1mb
const  chunkSize = 10 ** 6; 

// calculating video where to start and where to end.
const  start = Number(range.replace(/\D/g, ""));
const  end = Math.min(start + chunkSize, videoSize - 1);
const  contentLength = end - start + 1;

// setup video headers
const  headers = {
"Content-Range":  `bytes ${start}-${end}/${videoSize}`,
"Accept-Ranges":  "bytes",
"Content-Length":  contentLength,
"Content-Type":  "video/mp4",
};

res.writeHead(206, headers);
// creating readStream (stdin).
const  videoStream = fs.createReadStream(videoPath, { start, end });

// create live stream pipe line
videoStream.pipe(res);
}); And then run . to see your work. npm run start What is pipe() in streaming? Streams make for quite a handy abstraction, and there's a lot you can do with them - as an example, , the method used to take a readable stream and connect it to a writeable stream. the writable stream is the user we request him the data buffers. stream.pipe() Project source code: https://github.com/alguerocode/video-streaming Follow me on GitHub: alguerocode Thank you for reading.

Node.js Tutorial: How to Build a Video Streaming Application in 10 Minutes

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