I’m developing a Discord bot that should notify my server whenever I’m live on Twitch. I’ve tried a few different bots, but they haven’t worked well for me, so I want to create my own. My plan is to utilize the Twitch API with Python, but I’m struggling to find any reliable guides or recent tutorials. Can anyone share how to check whether a specific streamer is live through the Twitch API using Python? Any example code or advice on this would be greatly appreciated!
I built something similar last year and hit the same problem with outdated tutorials. The main thing that got me was figuring out Twitch now requires OAuth authentication even for public data. You’ll need to register your app in the Twitch Developer Console to get a Client ID and Client Secret. Then use the requests library to authenticate and hit the streams endpoint. One gotcha - the API returns an empty data array when a streamer’s offline, not a specific status field. Also make sure you’re using the new Helix API endpoints, not the deprecated v5 ones that still pop up in old tutorials. Rate limits are pretty generous for this, so polling every few minutes won’t hit any limits.
The Twitch API docs look confusing at first, but OAuth isn’t too bad once you figure it out. After you get your access token, just make GET requests to https://api.twitch.tv/helix/streams?user_login=YOUR_USERNAME. You’ll get stream data if you’re live, empty array if not. Store your tokens properly - they expire and you’ll need to refresh them. For Discord bots, I check the API every 2-3 minutes and compare against the last state so I don’t spam notifications. The requests library works great, just don’t forget your Client-ID and Authorization headers on every call.
twitch updated their API, so old tutorials r pretty much useless now. first up, register an app to get your oauth token. then, just hit the streams endpoint - if it’s empty, they’re offline. if data’s there, they’re live. learned the hard way bout needing both client ID n bearer token in your headers for every request.
The Twitch API for stream status looks complicated at first, but it’s pretty simple once you get the auth flow down. Set up your app credentials, then focus on solid error handling - network hiccups and API downtime will break your bot otherwise. Use exponential backoff for failed requests and save the last known state to a file or database. This stops duplicate notifications when your bot restarts. Heads up: some streamers sit in ‘Just Chatting’ while technically live but not gaming, so you might want to filter by game categories depending on what notifications you want. The API gives you viewer count and stream title too - throw those into your Discord notifications to make them way more useful.