Twitch API Overview

Get introduced to Twitch and the Twitch API.

We'll cover the following

What is Twitch?

Twitch is an online live streaming service for various types of content, like esports, music, and sports. It is popular among gamers who use it to broadcast their gameplay to live audiences. Streamers can also interact with their audience using the chat feature.

The Twitch API

Twitch provides a REST API that developers can use to develop their integrations and extensions for Twitch. This API can be used to manage and manipulate multiple Twitch resources. Here are some of these resources:

  • Users
  • Channels
  • Streams
  • Videos
  • Clips
  • Chats
  • Games

The API provides a vast number of endpoints used to manage these resources. We can perform the following actions to manage these resources:

  • Search for users.

  • Retrieve and update user details.

  • View and manage user settings, such as viewing follow lists and blocking users.

  • Retrieve and update channel details.

  • Update streaming schedules by adding streams and setting vacation periods.

  • Get information regarding ongoing live streams.

  • Get information regarding the most popular games played on Twitch.

  • Create clips of ongoing live streams.

We'll go through some of these use cases in this course and make actual calls to the Twitch API to achieve them. The base URL for each endpoint of the API is as follows:

https://api.twitch.tv/helix/