Ship a 'Go Live' button: OBS in, LL-HLS out, webhooks in between
TL;DR We're adding live streaming to a SaaS dashboard: a backend endpoint that creates a stream, OBS as the broadcaster over RTMPS, LL-HLS playback with hls.js, and a webhook handler that keeps the UI honest. Working "go live" flow in an afternoon. 📦 Code: github.com/USER/repo (replace before publishing) Webinars, coaching sessions, company town halls: sooner or later your product gets the "can users go live?" ticket. The hard parts (ingest servers, transcoding, CDN delivery) are exactly the parts you should not build. We'll use FastPix as the managed layer here; the same flow works nearly line-for-line on Mux, Cloudflare Stream, or api.video. What we're building: A backend endpoint that creates a live stream and returns a stream key An OBS setup broadcasters can follow in two minutes A viewer page playing LL-HLS with hls.js A webhook handler that flips the webinar between scheduled → live → ended 1. Create the stream server-side 🛠️ You need API credentials (Access Token ID + Secret Key). FastPix uses Basic auth on the server API. Node 20.x, plain fetch , no SDK required (though official Node.js/Python/Go/Ruby/PHP/Java/C# SDKs exist if you prefer). // server/routes/streams.js import { Router } from " express " ; const router = Router (); const AUTH = " Basic " + Buffer . from ( ` ${ process . env . FP_TOKEN_ID } : ${ process . env . FP_SECRET } ` ). toString ( " base64 " ); router . post ( " /webinars/:id/stream " , async ( req , res ) => { const r = await fetch ( " https://api.fastpix.io/v1/live/streams " , { method : " POST " , headers : { " Content-Type " : " application/json " , Authorization : AUTH }, body : JSON . stringify ({ playbackSettings : { accessPolicy : " public " }, }), }); if ( ! r . ok ) return res . status ( 502 ). json ({ error : " stream create failed " }); const stream = await r . json (); // persist against your webinar row: // streamId, streamKey (SECRET!), playbackId await db . webinar . update ( req . params . id , { streamId : stream . str