Release 0.4 Completed

    This is the final blog post for this semester. I've finished and sent out a Pull Request for my Issue on Import Youtube Playlist Feature. There were some changes in terms of how the items are returned as items, and due to that, the number of items in a valid playlist will be reduced to 100 items.

    In this project, I spent a lot of time going through routes and components, as well as how the frontend gets data from its server by using Axio HTTP requests. I got the UI part of the issue done relatively quick due to me getting quite used to making react components, but the majority of the time was spent on knowing how Youtube API will work as well as how I can set up an API endpoint in the server for the data that I will need to retrieve for my feature.

    Basically, the user will enter the playlist's URL into the input box and that string of URL will be passed to a function on click and concatenated to the server's API path where an Axios request will be made to call the server side's function that identifies the URL with Regex and then cut the string to get the playlist Id. The Id will be passed through an npm package named yt-search, which is a web scraper that returns in object format all the videos featured in the playlist. This method does not require me to make usage of an API key and is quite straightforward in terms of logic and steps need, one downside is that the tool only accepts playlists with under 100 videos for unknown reasons.

    I asked the repository's owner about this and he seemed to be ok with accepting small playlists only because this is the first time the feature is being implemented and nothing else inside the project uses Google API. I am very grateful to Ian (The repository owner) for his willingness to help me out and point me in the right direction when I am lost in the code as to where things go throughout the entire time I was working on the feature.

    I learned the basics of how data transfer from server to frontend as well as basic API requests in this project, and I am planning to stay notified about this project for future issues that I can work on or help out at.



    I'm glad that I took the Open Source Development course, I've learned a bunch of things about web development along with Git commands from every assignment. I will definitely continue to make contributions on Github to grow more as a programmer.

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