pxy

pxy is a Go server that routes incoming livestream data from websockets to an external RTMP endpoint.

This project is a work in progress, I'll update it more with time.

Context

For a side-project of mine, I've to broadcast live streams through an external service that uses the RTMP protocol. Unfortunately, my front-ends (Flutter and all web browsers out there) do not support the RTMP protocol. Therefore, I built pxy to proxy the live streams from such clients (via websockets) to the broadcasting RTMP servers. Since RTMP is still widely used in the video streaming industry, I thought amateurs like myself could benefit from an implementation like pxy for our own live streaming side-projects.

Status

Fundamentally, pxy works well so far. However, there are probably still bugs that needs be ironed out. If you do find any, feel free to open an issue or make a pull request. Meanwhile, you could use pxy as a reference for implementing your own websocket-RTMP proxy. Alternatively, you could clone this project and modify it to suit your needs.

Try it Out

pxy can be setup in two ways, with, or without Docker. Head to the respective sections after completing the preliminaries for more instructions on your preferred way to setup.

Preliminaries

Clone and navigate to the repository's root.

git clone https://github.com/chuabingquan/pxy.git && cd pxy-master/

Update your RTMP endpoint address under the constants in cmd/pxy/main.go.

const (
	readBufferSize  = 1024
	writeBufferSize = 1024
	publishURL      = "rtmp://global-live.mux.com:5222/app" // This one here.
)

Setup pxy with Docker (Recommended)

Before proceeding, please ensure that Docker is already installed on your machine.

Start by building the pxy docker image.

docker build -t pxy .

Proceed to run a container that's based on the built pxy docker image.

docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 pxy

Setup pxy without Docker

Before proceeding, please install FFmpeg on your machine (please Google how to).

Build and run the pxy server.

go run cmd/pxy/main.go

Final Steps

Once your pyx instance is up and running, access http://localhost:8080 from your browser (preferably Chrome) and supply your stream name/stream key.

On the backend, pxy will append the given stream name/stream key behind the RTMP endpoint address that's defined in the preliminaries section of this README (e.g. rtmp://global-live.mux.com:5222/app/<YOUR_STREAM_NAME>).

At this point, your RTMP endpoint should receive the proxied live stream from pxy. Playback (viewing) of the live stream is dependent on the tools/services that's hosting your RTMP endpoint.

References

• The state of going live from a browser
• Streaming to Facebook Live from a canvas