match-uploader

Match Uploader is a tool to help upload FRC match videos to YouTube in a fast, consistent manner.

Data source attributions:

• Powered by The Blue Alliance
• Event Data provided by FIRST

Production usage

To get started:

1. Clone this repo locally. You don't actually need the source code, but it's the easiest way to get the directory structure for the required Docker volumes.
2. Copy server/env/production.env.example to server/env/production.env and fill in the values using the descriptions in Environment variables below.
3. Adjust docker-compose.yaml as needed (additional details in comments on the relevant lines):
   1. Set the port you want to access the web client on by editing the port property on the web container
   2. Adjust the path to your videos directory by editing the volumes property on the web and worker containers
      1. The default docker-compose.yaml file uses a YAML anchor to keep the volumes in sync between the web and worker containers. In that case, you only have to update the volumes for the web container, and the worker container will use those volumes as well.
4. Run docker compose up to start the containers.
   1. If there's a new version of Match Uploader available, you can pull the latest version by running docker compose pull before docker compose up.
   2. The first time you run Match Uploader, Docker containers are pulled and database migrations are run. This can take a few minutes.
   3. On a successful startup, everything should be ready to go once you see the worker container log INFO: Worker connected and looking for jobs...
   4. These db container log messages are safe to ignore:
      1. database system is shut down and server stopped as long as there is activity after.
      2. ERROR: relation "graphile_worker.migrations" does not exist at character 93 (unsure why this is logged, but this is related to the worker library Match Uploader uses, Graphile Worker, and does not seem to be problematic)
      3. could not receive data from client: Connection reset by peer
   5. The worker container may log Failed to read crontab file '/home/node/app/server/crontab'; cron is disabled; you can ignore this.
5. Open the web client at http://localhost (or whatever port you set in step 3.1).
6. Once the web UI is open, you will see several errors and warnings to resolve prior to uploading your first video. Open the settings page from the left sidebar to complete setup:
   1. Enter or confirm defaults for Event name, Event TBA code, (event code from The Blue Alliance), Playoffs type, Sandbox mode (enable to test uploads without actually uploading to YouTube), and Video upload privacy.
      1. The sandbox mode and video upload privacy settings are useful for testing your setup without making things public.
         1. To upload public videos, set Sandbox mode to Off and Video upload privacy to Public.
   2. Provide your API keys for The Blue Alliance.
      1. Read API key: This is the recommended way to retrieve match data for your events. However, you can instead set up the FRC Events API if data for your event is not available on The Blue Alliance.
      2. Trusted (write) API: Allows you to associate match videos with matches on The Blue Alliance.
   3. YouTube API setup:
      1. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to connect your YouTube channel. Note: This step can only be completed when the app is hosted on localhost or with a valid top-level domain due to Google OAuth2 app restrictions.
   4. YouTube playlist mappings: If you have playlists that you'd like match videos added to, follow the instructions in this section to set this up.
   5. Video description template: While no warning appears for this, you should double-check that the default video description template fits your needs and adjust it as needed.
   6. Read below on how to structure your videos directory, which is where you'll place the video files for matches.

Video directory structure

Match Uploader expects a specific directory structure for your videos. When running Match Uploader in Docker, you can mount any directory (such as one that your video production software writes recordings to) as the videos volume (for specifics, see Docker volumes, below).

The expected directory structure is as follows:

videos/
├─ unlabeled/
│  ├─ Qualification 1.mp4
├─ $LABEL/
│  ├─ Qualification 1.mp4

Tip

The .mp4 video extension is just an example. You can use any file type that YouTube supports.

A video label is an extra description for when you have multiple videos to upload for one match. Match Uploader will include the video label in the middle of the video title, e.g., Qualification Match 1 - $LABEL - Event Name.

What if I don't want a label in the video title? A video with no label is labeled unlabeled (so you would put videos that should be unlabeled in a directory called unlabeled). This will title the video like Qualification Match 1 - Event Name.

After being uploaded, videos are moved to a directory called uploaded within each label directory. (You don't need to create the uploaded directories; they'll get created automatically when needed.) For instance:

videos/
├─ unlabeled/
│  ├─ uploaded/
│  │  ├─ Qualification 1.mp4
|  ├─ Qualification 2.mp4
├─ $LABEL/
│  ├─ uploaded/
│  │  ├─ Qualification 1.mp4
|  ├─ Qualification 2.mp4

Caution

Don't mount your videos directory as a read-only Docker volume. Otherwise, the server won't be able to move videos to the uploaded directories.

Docker Compose setup in-depth

Docker containers

The Docker Compose file actually runs 3 containers. You'll need all of them running to use Match Uploader. The containers should be started in this order (the default Docker Compose setup provided will handle this for you):

1. db: A Postgres database, primarily used for storing information about worker jobs
2. web: Includes the backend server as well as the frontend web client
3. worker: A worker that asynchronously handles jobs such as video uploads

Environment variables

For simplicity, and to keep secrets out of docker-compose.yaml, all 3 containers mentioned above will pull environment variables from the server/env/production.env file. As a result, not all containers use all the environment variables, and you need to provide values for database information in two different environment variables. There are some additional environment variables defined in the file that are not specified below; please leave those intact.

Important

You must define both the POSTGRES_* environment variables and the DB_CONNECTION_STRING environment variable. The db container uses the POSTGRES_* environment variables to set up the database configuration, while the web and worker containers use the DB_CONNECTION_STRING environment variable to connect to the database.

Variable	Description	Sample value
PORT	Determines the port the backend server runs on inside of its container. (To change the external container port, you'd want to edit the port property on the web container in docker-compose.yaml.)	Leave set to default: 8080
POSTGRES_DB	Used by the db container. The name of the Postgres database to create.	Leave set to default: match_uploader
POSTGRES_USER	Used by the db container. Determines the username of the user created to access the Postgres server, so you can put anything here as long as you use the same value in DB_CONNECTION_STRING.	Leave set to default: match_uploader
POSTGRES_PASSWORD	Used by the db container. Determines the password of the user created to access the Postgres server, so you can put anything here as long as you use the same value in DB_CONNECTION_STRING.	Pick any random string to use as a password
DB_CONNECTION_STRING	Used by the web and worker containers. Connection string to connect to the PostgreSQL server.	Recommended value: postgres://${POSTGRES_USER}:${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}@${POSTGRES_HOST}:${POSTGRES_PORT}/${POSTGRES_DB} (replace values with environment variables already defined; POSTGRES_HOST with the default Match Uploader Docker Compose configuration would be db; POSTGRES_PORT should be the default Postgres port, 5432)
WORKER_WEB_SERVER_URL	Used by the worker container. The URL (include protocol, domain, and port) where the backend server can be reached from inside the worker container. This value is provided to Socket.IO to connect to the WebSocket server hosted out of the web container.	Leave set to default: http://web:8080

Timezones

The Docker Compose setup defaults to using the America/New_York timezone. If your timezone is different, you'll need to build the Dockerfile from scratch with the correct timezone (sorry this isn't easier!) and also update the TZ and PGTZ environment variables for the Postgres container in docker-compose.yaml.

Docker volumes

There are 3 required Docker volumes for the web and worker containers:

• Videos: Mount your local videos directory as a volume to /home/node/app/server/videos
  • The directory structure is described in Video directory structure
• Environment variables: Server environment variables located in /home/node/app/server/env
  • Make a copy of server/env/production.env.example and fill in the values. Descriptions of what you need to fill in are described above.
• Settings: Mount a directory to persist settings files to /home/node/app/server/settings
  • You can leave the directory empty initially and Match Uploader will create settings files for you

Examples of how to provide these volumes are in docker-compose.yaml.

The Postgres container requires a volume to persist the database in. The default Docker Compose setup is set up so that Docker will create this volume for you.

Worker

Prior to v2.0, Match Uploader uploaded videos synchronously in an HTTP client. To add flexibility, v2.0 added a worker container that can asynchronously handle jobs such as video uploads.

From the client, you will notice very few changes with the worker in use. However, there are some important details to note:

• Leave the worker running. Jobs will stack up and videos won't upload otherwise.
• The frontend receives job status updates in real-time. Using WebSockets, the worker communicates job status updates to the frontend. The WebSocket is connected if you see a green dot next to the "Worker" label in the top-right corner of the frontend.
  • Note that the green dot only indicates the WebSocket status, and the WebSocket connection is brokered through the server. Thus, if the server is up but the worker is not running, the Worker status indicator will be green. Likewise, a red status indicates a problem with the client or server, not necessarily the worker.
• Keep an eye out for failed jobs. While you have the client open, failed jobs will be flagged with a badge on the Worker queue icon in the left sidebar. You can open the Worker page to view details of pending and recently failed jobs.

With the worker, a video upload will now create a new job. Here are the possible statuses a job can have:

Status	Description
Pending	The job is waiting to be processed by the worker. (To ensure videos upload in the correct order, video uploads are processed serially in the order they are queued, one at a time.)
Started	The worker is actively handling the job. Logs are visible via the worker container, e.g., docker compose logs --follow worker
Failed (retryable)	An error occurred while handling the job. The job still has at least one more attempt remaining and will be retried.
Completed	The job has finished successfully.
Failed	An error occurred while handling the job. The job has no more attempts remaining and will not be retried.

A normal job lifecycle is to go from Pending to Started to Completed.

Local development

Project organization:

• server contains all backend code (nodejs, Express, TypeScript)
• client contains all frontend code (Vue3, Typescript)

Install some baseline dependencies:

• nodejs (version >= 20.0 required; Node 20 (LTS) is recommended)

• yarn

• To run the server: cd server && yarn run dev

• In a separate terminal, run the client: cd client && yarn run dev

Database migrations

The server uses Prisma to manage our database. Check out the Prisma docs and server/prisma for more information.

Migrations are automatically run when the server starts in the production Docker Compose setup. If you change the database as part of a change, be sure to include a migration that can run on startup to apply changes for existing users.

Releases

To trigger an automatic version increment and create releases, make sure the commit message when merging your PR starts with a type and scope, followed by a colon and a description (it's easiest to do this if you set your PR title correctly when you create it). For example:

type(scope): Brief description of changes
feat(youtube): Improve upload error handling
ci(github): Add automatic release workflow
docs(readme): Add release instructions
refactor(server): Move video upload to separate module
build(docker): Add docker-compose file
fix(client): Fix bug when uploading videos

The exact format required is based on the Angular commit message format. See https://gist.github.com/brianclements/841ea7bffdb01346392c for more details. The type must be one of the Angular commit message format types. No specific value is required for scope, though we may further define this as the project matures.

The release process will trigger automatically once your PR is merged. A GitHub tag and release will be created, and a new production image will be pushed to GitHub Container Registry.