📈 Serverless Trending API

A minimal scraping serverless API that returns trending videos based on a query, sorted by view count in descending order.

This is a Next.js API, it uses zero external dependencies outside of Next itself. The entire API is contained within api/search/route.ts, making it easy to plug into existing projects.

Index

• Features
• Usage
  • /api/search
• Configuration
• Installation
• License

Features

• An /api/search endpoint that scrapes YouTube search results
• Returns JSON with title, link, channel, thumbnail, and views
• In-memory cache speeds up repeated requests
• Configurable settings for cache TTL and min/max result limit

Usage

1. A GET request is made to /api/search with a search term.
2. The server checks the in-memory cache; if a result exists, it returns cached data.
3. If no cache, it scrapes the YouTube search results page, extracts embedded JSON (ytInitialData), parses video info, and sorts by view count.
4. The result is cached and sent back as a JSON response.

/api/search

Query parameters:

• q: Search term
• limit (optional): Number of results (defaults to 1, maximum defaults to 4, all configurable)

Example local request using curl:

curl "http://localhost:3000/api/search?q=lofi&limit=4"

Example response:

{
  "videos": [
    {
      "title": "Lofi Chill Beats",
      "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123",
      "channel": "Lofi Girl",
      "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/abc123/hqdefault.jpg",
      "views": 1250000
    },
    ...
  ]
}

Returned fields:

• title: Video title text
• link: Full YouTube video URL
• channel: Uploader’s name
• thumbnail: Thumbnail image URL
• views: View count as number

Configuration

Config variables can be found at the start of route.ts:

// Query limiting
const DEFAULT_LIMIT = 1;
const MAX_LIMIT = 4;

// Caching
const CACHE_TTL = 12 * 60 * 60 * 1000; // 12 hours

Installation

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/yt-trend-scraper-api.git
cd yt-trend-scraper-api

Install dependencies:

npm install

Test the development server

npm run dev

Test http://localhost:3000/search?q=test to verify it’s running.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more information.