I am trying to make a social media website, (similar to TikTok) but the watch page keeps refreshing.

My JS sends JSON like this to the backend, which keeps track of likes, dislikes, views, etc. in a SQLite database:

{
  "action": {action e.g. like, dislike, view}
  "id": {video_id e.g. 1)
}

Then, the backend processes it with this function:

@app.route('/trackStatistics', methods=['POST'])
def track_statistics():
    try:
        # Get the JSON data from the request
        data = request.get_json()

        # Validate the action and id
        if 'action' not in data or 'id' not in data:
            return jsonify({'error': 'Invalid request'}), 400

        action = data['action']
        video_id = data['id']

        data = get_video(video_id)

        print(data)

        if action == "like":
            data["likes"] = int(data["likes"]) + 1
        elif action == "dislike":
            data["dislikes"] = int(data["dislikes"]) + 1
        elif action == "unlike":
            data["likes"] = int(data["likes"]) - 1
        elif action == "undislike":
            data["dislikes"] = int(data["dislikes"]) - 1
        elif action == "view":
            data["views"] = int(data["views"]) + 1
        
        update_video(video_id, data["publisher"], data["title"], data["likes"], data["dislikes"], data["views"], data["comments"], False)

        print(data)

        # Return the updated data
        return jsonify(data), 200

    except Exception as e:
        print(str(e))
        return jsonify({'error': str(e)}), 500

Here’s the file with my update_video, get_video, and create_video functions defined:

import sqlite3
import json
from datetime import datetime

def get_video(video_id):
    conn = sqlite3.connect('../databases/videos.db')
    c = conn.cursor()
    c.execute("SELECT * FROM videos WHERE id = ?", (video_id,))
    video = c.fetchone()
    comments = json.loads(video[6]) if video[6] else []
    video = list(video)
    video[6] = comments
    conn.close()
    return {
        "id": video[0],
        "publisher": video[1],
        "title": video[2],
        "likes": video[3],
        "dislikes": video[4],
        "views": video[5],
        "comments": video[6],
        "created_at": video[7],
        "updated_at": video[8]
    }

def create_video(publisher, title, likes, dislikes, views, comments):
    conn = sqlite3.connect('../databases/videos.db')
    c = conn.cursor()
    now = datetime.now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
    comments_json = json.dumps(comments)
    c.execute("INSERT INTO videos (publisher, title, likes, dislikes, views, comments, created_at, updated_at) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)", 
              (publisher, title, likes, dislikes, views, comments_json, now, now))
    conn.commit()
    conn.close()
    return c.lastrowid

def update_video(video_id, publisher, title, likes, dislikes, views, comments, update_time):
    conn = sqlite3.connect('../databases/videos.db')
    c = conn.cursor()

    # Get the current updated_at time
    c.execute("SELECT updated_at FROM videos WHERE id = ?", (video_id,))
    last_updated = c.fetchone()[0]

    if update_time:
        now = datetime.now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
    else:
        now = last_updated

    comments_json = json.dumps(comments)
    c.execute("UPDATE videos SET publisher = ?, title = ?, likes = ?, dislikes = ?, views = ?, comments = ?, updated_at = ? WHERE id = ?",
              (publisher, title, likes, dislikes, views, comments_json, now, video_id))
    conn.commit()
    conn.close()

I tried to keep track of the video stats and the server seems to work, it prints the correct data! But, after giving code 200 success, it refreshes the page.