Youtube Comment Extension

Inspiration

After Google instantiated numerous changes to YouTube's comment section, we felt that we missed the old comment sorting features of YouTube. So, we took it upon ourselves to create a Chrome extension to solve our problem.

What it does

The extension can sort comments by likes from lowest to highest, and comments from most recent/oldest as well as most replies.

How we built it

The front end was being built out of HTML&CSS as well as JavaScript, which are required by Google in every single extension. Most of the heavy lifting in the back-end work is done using Java using the YouTube API along with Gradle. The extension obtains the Youtube Video ID from the URL the user currently is visiting and feeds that to the backend program which sorts according to the user choice, then outputs a JSON, where the content scripts within the extension would read that input and output the result visually on YouTube.

Challenges we ran into

Faced with a lack of experience, our team members spent a vast amount of time learning new knowledge, applying what we learned to parts of our project. However, ultimately, the shortage of familiarity with the APIs, libraries, and languages we were required to use to build the extension led to a lack of time in completing our project. Some of the following are some issues that we worked through: — Writing code in accordance with Google's CSP (Content Security Policy) — Compiling Java outputs into JSON files — Inexperience working with Chrome Extension Developer APIs

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As a team, we improved our skills immensely. Through this hackathon, we each learned how to use Git, improved our proficiency in languages that we had worked with, and learned to use various APIs that we had never touched before. While our extension may not be fully complete, we have small sections that show our work. The extension displays correctly, the HTML&CSS formatted to what we wanted, and finally, the program written to sort the comments works well.

What we learned

While our extension may not have been completed, we were very satisfied with our experience, allowing us to develop our skills in JS, Java, Git, HTML&CSS, as well as utilize the languages not only within their standard developer kits, but also with APIs we had never used before.

What's next for Youtube Comment Extension

Although we didn't finish it, we will continue to work on our project after Hack the 6ix, and hopefully be able to release a completed version of it on Github. We hope that you will come back and try out our completed extension in the future!

Built With

• chrome-extension-api
• github
• gradle
• html&css
• java
• javascript
• json
• youtubeapi