How I Built a Live TV Search Tool After M3U Links Died

Description and use

A lightweight web tool that daily crawls and validates live TV stream URLs, enabling users to instantly search for working channels without manual testing.

Problem

Free M3U playlists for live TV channels expire quickly, leaving users unable to watch desired content and forcing them to manually search for working streams.

Outcome

The tool reduces downtime for live TV viewers, provides a free and open‑source solution, and has gained traction among overseas Chinese communities.

Workflow

• 1. Crawl public streaming source lists every morning using a Node.js script on Cloudflare Workers.
• 2. Test each URL to determine if the stream is active.
• 3. Store only healthy URLs in a D1 database.
• 4. Expose a search page where users can query by channel name, country, or category to retrieve a live stream URL instantly.

Evidence

I wrote a script that crawls public streaming sources every morning, tests which URLs actually work, and keeps only the healthy ones.

Source

The tech stack is pretty minimal: Node.js on Cloudflare Workers, D1 for the database, and a daily cron job to refresh the source list.

Source