Extracting all user names from Twitch chat data

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1

I’m working on a project to get all the usernames from Twitch chat data. Right now I can only grab the first name but I want to get them all. My goal is to put all the names in an array and then filter out special users like viewers, admins, and staff.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

use strict;
use warnings;

my @chat_users = fetch_chat_users();

sub fetch_chat_users {
    my $endpoint = 'CHAT_DATA_URL';
    my $raw_data = fetch_data($endpoint);
    my @processed_data;
    my $counter = 0;

    while ($counter < 2) {
        my $username = ($raw_data[$counter] =~ /"\s*(.*?)\s*"/) ? $1 : '';
        print $username;
        $counter++;
    }
    return @processed_data;
}

print @chat_users;

This code only gets the first name. How can I modify it to get all the usernames? And what’s the best way to remove the special user types from the list? Any help would be great!

2

As someone who’s worked extensively with Twitch chat data, I can tell you that regex isn’t always the most reliable method for parsing this kind of information. Have you considered using a dedicated IRC library for Perl? Something like POE::Component::IRC might be more robust for handling Twitch’s chat protocol.

For filtering out special users, you could maintain a configuration file with user types to exclude. This way, you can easily update the list without modifying your code.

Also, don’t forget to handle rate limiting. Twitch has strict API limits, and you don’t want your script to get blocked. Implementing a delay between requests or using a queue system could help manage this.

Lastly, if you’re dealing with a large volume of chat data, consider using a database to store and query the usernames efficiently. This approach scales much better than in-memory arrays for large datasets.

3

I’ve dealt with a similar issue when working on Twitch chat analysis. Instead of using a counter, you might want to consider using a while loop to iterate through all the data. Something like:

while ($raw_data =~ /"\s*(.*?)\s*"/g) {
    push @processed_data, $1;
}

This will capture all usernames. For filtering out special users, you could create a hash of user types to exclude and then use grep to filter your array:

my %exclude = map { $_ => 1 } qw(viewer admin staff);
@processed_data = grep { !$exclude{$_} } @processed_data;

Remember to handle potential encoding issues, as Twitch usernames can contain Unicode characters. Also, consider using a proper JSON parser for more robust data handling if the chat data is in JSON format.