This sample application shows how to record an OpenTok session.

Enter your credentials in config.js and the application will work.

Note: There is a devDependency sirv-cli in the project that is only necessary to run the demo on StackBlitz.

Important: Read the following sections of the main README file for the repository to set up and test the application:

• Setting up the test web service
• Configuring the application
• Testing the application

Important notes:

• Be sure to set up the test web service. The API calls to start and stop OpenTok archives take place on the server (not in the web client).

• This application uses archives that are stored in the OpenTok cloud. In your OpenTok Account page, ensure that OpenTok project you use is not set up to use cloud storage on Microsoft Azure or Amazon S3. In a production application, you will want to use a project that has archive file cloud storage on Microsoft Azure or Amazon S3 enabled, since archives stored on the OpenTok cloud are only available for 72 hours.

For this application, click the Start Archive button (in the bottom-left hand corner of the page) to start recording the OpenTok session. Then click the Stop Archive button to stop recording the session. Clicking View Archive will open a link in a new Window/Tab to view the archive.

The OpenTok Archiving API lets you record a session's audio-video streams to MP4 files. You use server-side code to start and stop archive recordings. In the config.js file, you set the SAMPLE_SERVER_BASE_URL variable to the base URL of the web service the app calls to start archive recording, stop recording, and play back the recorded video.

To start recording the video stream, the user clicks the Start Archive button which invokes the startArchiving() method in app.js. This method in turn sends a POST request to server. The session ID of the session that needs to be recorded is passed as a URL parameter to the server. Once the 'archiveStarted' event is fired, the Start Archive button is hidden and the Stop Archive button is displayed.

async function startArchiving(){
  console.log('start archiving');
  try {
    archive = await postData(SAMPLE_SERVER_BASE_URL +'/archive/start',{sessionId});
    console.log('archive started: ', archive);
    if (archive.status !== 'started'){
      handleError(archive.error);
    } else {
      console.log('successfully started archiving: ',archive);
    }
  }
  catch(error){
    handleError(error);
  }
}

To stop the recording, the user clicks the Stop Archive button, which invokes the stopArchiving() method. This method is similar to the startArchiving() method in that it sends a POST request to the server to stop the archive. The only difference is that this method passes the archive ID of the archive that needs to be stopped as a URL parameter instead of the sessionId. When the archiveStopped event is fired, the Stop Archive button is hidden while the Start Archive button and View Archive link are shown.

async function stopArchiving(){
  console.log('stop archiving');
  try {
    archive = await postData(`${SAMPLE_SERVER_BASE_URL}/archive/${archive.id}/stop`,{});
    console.log('archive stopped: ', archive);
    if (archive.status !== 'stopped'){
      handleError(archive.error);
    } else {
      console.log('successfully stopped archiving: ',archive);
    }
  }
  catch(error){
    handleError(error);
  }
}

To view the archive that has just been recorded, the user clicks View Archive link which opens in a new Window/Tab. The server code has the logic to check if the archive is available or not. If it is available, the application is redirected to the archive page. If not, a new page is loaded which continuously checks whether the archive is available or not, and it displays the archive when it is available.

Notes:

• In most applications, control of the archive recording would not be granted to each end-user.

• You can have automatically archived sessions, which are recorded whenever a client starts publishing a stream.

• This sample application uses archives that are stored in the OpenTok cloud. For a production application, you will want to set up a project to have archive file cloud storage on Microsoft Azure or Amazon S3 enabled, since archives stored on the OpenTok cloud are only available for 72 hours. To set up Microsoft Azure or Amazon S3 storage for a project's archives, go to your OpenTok Account page.

For more information, see the OpenTok archiving developer guide.