Torrent Streamer

A self-hosted movie streaming app that downloads torrents on-demand and plays them in the browser. Built with React, Hono, WebTorrent, and Sequelize.

Movies are fetched from the YTS catalog, ranked by TMDb popularity, and searchable through an infinite-scroll UI. When you click a movie, the server downloads the torrent in real-time via Server-Sent Events, caches it for 24 hours, and serves the video with subtitle support and HTTP range seeking.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• A NordVPN subscription (for the SOCKS5 proxy)
• A TMDb API read access token (for popularity ranking and poster images)

Setup

cp .env.example .env.local
npm install

Edit .env.local with your values:

PORT=3900
APP_URL=http://localhost:8900
DATABASE_DIALECT=sqlite3
DATABASE_URL=sqlite3:database.sqlite
TMDB_API_KEY=your-tmdb-read-access-token
BASE_PATH=/
PROXY_HOST=amsterdam.nl.socks.nordhold.net
PROXY_PORT=1080
PROXY_USERNAME=your-nordvpn-username
PROXY_PASSWORD=your-nordvpn-password

NordVPN SOCKS5 Proxy

All outbound requests to YTS are routed through a SOCKS5 proxy to bypass regional restrictions. NordVPN provides SOCKS5 servers for this purpose.

1. Log in to my.nordaccount.com and go to Services > NordVPN.
2. Under Manual setup, copy your service credentials (username and password). These are different from your NordVPN login credentials.
3. Choose a server hostname from NordVPN's server list. The hostname format is hostname.nordhold.net and the port is 1080.
4. Set PROXY_HOST, PROXY_PORT, PROXY_USERNAME, and PROXY_PASSWORD in .env.local.

TMDb API Key

The app uses the TMDb API to fetch poster images and downloads a daily export to rank movies by popularity. A read access token is required.

1. Create an account at themoviedb.org.
2. Go to Settings > API and copy your API Read Access Token (the long JWT, not the shorter API key).
3. Set TMDB_API_KEY in .env.local.

Development

npm start

This starts the Vite dev server (client) and tsx watch (server) concurrently. The client runs at localhost:8900 and the server at localhost:3900.

CLI

# Manually refresh the movie catalog from YTS
npm run cli -- update-streams

# Download a specific torrent by hash
npm run cli -- download-torrent <hash>

# Remove expired cached downloads
npm run cli -- cleanup-cache

Cron Jobs

These run automatically when the server is running:

• Every 6 hours — Refreshes the movie catalog from YTS and updates torrent availability.
• Every hour — Deletes cached downloads older than 24 hours and removes their files from disk.

Production

npm run build
pm2 start --name app build/server/index.js

Example NGINX config:

server {
    server_name _;
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    client_max_body_size 500m;

    index index.html;
    root /var/www/torrents/build/client;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html =404;
    }

    location /api {
        proxy_redirect off;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3900;
    }
}

Environment Variables

Dotenvx is used for storing encrypted environment variables in version control. Config files are loaded in this order (later values override earlier ones):

1. .env.dev or .env.prod (encrypted, committed)
2. .env.local (local overrides, gitignored)
3. Process environment variables

Encrypt/decrypt commands:

npm run env:encrypt:dev
npm run env:decrypt:dev
npm run env:encrypt:prod
npm run env:decrypt:prod

Keep .env.keys out of version control.

Testing

npm run test        # Run all tests
npm run check       # TypeScript type check

Database

SQLite is the default. To use MySQL instead, update your .env.local:

DATABASE_DIALECT=mysql
DATABASE_URL=mysql://root:secret@127.0.0.1:3306/torrents