From e86cd8a7779826e5a34753ab84d724ecbaa29192 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: EazyHood <jhonatandelrio9@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2026 10:58:38 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] channels: report missing interactive titles cleanly

Use optional lookup for title.simpleText and raise the same InfoException used for incomplete carousel headers. Add a focused regression fixture for the missing nested title text.
---
 spec/invidious/channels/about_spec.cr | 16 ++++++++++++++++
 src/invidious/channels/about.cr       |  3 ++-
 2 files changed, 18 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/spec/invidious/channels/about_spec.cr b/spec/invidious/channels/about_spec.cr
index abac6e2ad..faf776135 100644
--- a/spec/invidious/channels/about_spec.cr
+++ b/spec/invidious/channels/about_spec.cr
@@ -200,6 +200,22 @@ Spectator.describe "extract_auto_generated_channel_header" do
     expect(header[:tags]).to eq(["Gaming"])
   end
 
+  it "raises an InfoException when the legacy interactive title is missing" do
+    initdata = JSON.parse(<<-JSON).as_h
+      {
+        "header": {
+          "interactiveTabbedHeaderRenderer": {
+            "title": {}
+          }
+        }
+      }
+      JSON
+
+    expect do
+      extract_auto_generated_channel_header(initdata, "UCMissingTitle")
+    end.to raise_error(InfoException, /interactive title/)
+  end
+
   it "falls back to the channel URL when the canonical URL is missing" do
     initdata = JSON.parse(<<-JSON).as_h
       {
diff --git a/src/invidious/channels/about.cr b/src/invidious/channels/about.cr
index 4677f08d5..97b2fc884 100644
--- a/src/invidious/channels/about.cr
+++ b/src/invidious/channels/about.cr
@@ -41,7 +41,8 @@ def extract_auto_generated_channel_header(initdata : Hash(String, JSON::Any), uc
   tags = [] of String
 
   if header = initdata.dig?("header", "interactiveTabbedHeaderRenderer")
-    author = header.dig("title", "simpleText").as_s
+    author = header.dig?("title", "simpleText").try &.as_s
+    author ||= raise InfoException.new("Could not extract the interactive title of channel #{ucid}")
     author_url = initdata.dig?("microformat", "microformatDataRenderer", "urlCanonical").try &.as_s?
     author_url ||= "https://www.youtube.com/channel/#{ucid}"
     author_thumbnail = header.dig?("boxArt", "thumbnails", 0, "url").try &.as_s || ""