timezombi / broadcast-lichess-games

An easy way to Broadcast/Relay lichess games using heroku.

Broadcast Lichess Games

An easy way to Broadcast/Relay lichess games from a live url using heroku. This mainly focuses on getting a particular lichess users current games.

How to Use

• Fork this repository on GitHub.
• Login/Sign up to heroku Create a new heroku app.
• Go to the Deploy tab in heroku and click Connect to GitHub (Make sure your GitHub account is authorised to access heroku).
• Click on search and select your fork of this repository.
• Then Enable Automatic Deploys and then Deploy Branch. Make sure you choose the master branch to deploy.
• Then go to the Settings in heroku and scroll down and click on Reveal Config Vars and add the necessary Config Vars from here.
• Now click on Open app in heroku and save this link as you will need it soon for your broadcast.
• Now go to Lichess and create a new broadcast. Add your Event Name, Description and all other required details for your broadcast. In the Source URL, or game IDs field in your broadcast add the link that you had saved when you clicked on Open app in heroku. Now click on SUBMIT in lichess and then click CLICK TO CONNECT and your broadcast is now ready!!

Configuration Variables (Config Vars)

Set the following environment variables ( Heroku Config Vars ) in heroku.

Do note that all the variables mentioned below are in the format key=value

RELAY_URL

Your PGN source url. For live broadcasts, you need the live PGN url.

If you would like to get the live games of a particular user set this to https://lichess.org/api/user/<username>/current-game where you replace <username> with the username whos live games you would like to get.

To get your own live games, you can simply add the TOKEN config var, but the above can be used to get another users live games or live games from a live PGN source.

TOKEN

Your Lichess API Access Token (there is a pre-filled token for you here). This is required if you want to relay your ongoing games or live games. Make sure broadcast scopes are selected. Adding this increases the number of requests sent to lichess.

MAX_GAMES

Maximum number of your ongoing games to relay ( default : 1 ).

BROADCAST_ID

Broadcast id of your Lichess Broadcast. Your broadcast link should look something like https://lichess.org/broadcast/<event-name>/<Broadcast ID>. The digits in the place of <Broadcast ID> is what you place for this config var. Adding this increases the number of requests to lichess.

Usage

Server is started with node server.js.

Endpoint / path will relay the games you specified in RELAY_URL.

If you provide your API access token, then endpoint /ongoing will relay your ongoing games. An attempt will be made to initialize ongoing games from RELAY_URL if it is set. If you provide a BROADCAST_ID, then your ongoing games will be pushed to your broadcast ( in this case TOKEN must have broadcast scopes ).

Note: Live games of a particular user of another user is made 3 moves behind by lichess to prevent cheating by using the live analysis feature. Attempting to do so using this will not work as this is taken directly from Lichess' API. All precautions have been taken against users using this for any kind of cheat methods.

Note: Since Lichess Broadcast updates to the link every 3-5 seconds, all moves in fast games (bullet and blitz) will take longer to update.

Also using this under your own name without providing credits to the Author is completely discouraged. This Repositiory is run under the MIT License.