Minecraft-scraper

This Program looks up the amount and names of players on a given Minecraft-server. It is easily configurable with the below named files.

 

Example-Images

This is how the frontend looks normally

 

When hovered over a specific point, the playerlist at that specific time is shown

Installation

For installation nodejs is needed. To start the application, type

cd path/to/minecraft-scraper

npm i

npm start

or to start with nodemon:

npm run dev

After that the server is available under localhost:8083

 

Configuration

Backend

server.js

const mcServerAddress = "xx.xx.xx.xx"

The server-address to connect to

 

const mcServerPort = "25565"

The port to connect so. Default for Minecraft is 25565

 

const refreshCycle = 10

Every refreshCycle minutes the server will refresh the state of the server. A sencible number is between 5 and 15 for the most time. The server will start its cycle at the next full hour.

 

const filePath = __dirname + "/data.json"

The file to save the data that is retreived from the server every x minutes.
__dirname is the path, the server.js is located.

 

const nodeServerPort = 8083

The port to start the node-server to

 

Frontend

app.js

Title

const showTitle = true

If the title of the graph should be shown

 

const graphTitle = "Minecraft"

The title of the graph

 

Labels

const showLabels = true;

If the labels should be shown

 

const graphLabelOnline = "Players online"

The label for the data how many players are online

 

const graphLabelMax = "Player limit"

The label for the data how many players are allowed on the server max

Favicon

The favicon is located in ./http/favicon.png. Simply replace the file.
WARNING: The file maybe doesn't replace for the clients as it is cached. For that to work please delete the cache of your browser for the specific site.

 

Technical information

Backend

The backend uses node-default libraries, so none have to be installed

The node server uses https to request the server-information fromm api.minetools.eu and saves the data in JSON-format in the file with the provided path. The data returned by the api is the following:

{
    "description": "<MOTD>",
    "favicon": <FAVICON>,
    "latency": <FLOAT>,
    "players": {
        "max": <MAX_PLAYERS>,
        "online": <ONLINE_PLAYERS>,
        "sample": [
            {
                "id": "<UUID>",
                "name": "<USERNAME>"
            },
            ...
        ]
    },
    "version": {
        "name": "<MINECRAFT_VERSION>",
        "protocol": 754
    }
}

it is parsed to the file like that:

[
    {
        "timestamp":<MS_TIMESTAMP>,
        "playersOnline":<ONLINE_PLAYERS>,
        "playersMax":<MAX_PLAYERS>,
        "playersNames":[
            "<USERNAME>",
            ...
        ]
    },
    ...
]

 

For file-delivery a standard http server is started. As it is no dynamic content, the files are hardcoded so it effectively doesn't have to be dynamic.

Frontend

Dependencies:

• chart.js
  • The main graph that is displayed
• noUiSlider
  • The slider at the top of the graph that controls which parts of the data is shown
• jquery
  • request handling to the backend

On initialize the frontend analyzes the data that is returned by the node-server and determines the reload cycle and time so it reloads its contents. It automatically reloads in sync with the backends reload cycle so no manual reload of the website is needed.