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youtube-comment-downloader

Simple script for downloading Youtube comments without using the Youtube API. The output is in line delimited JSON.

Installation

Preferably inside a python virtual environment install this package via:

pip install youtube-comment-downloader

Or directly from the GitHub repository:

pip install https://github.com/egbertbouman/youtube-comment-downloader/archive/master.zip

Usage as command-line interface

$ youtube-comment-downloader --help
usage: youtube-comment-downloader [--help] [--youtubeid YOUTUBEID] [--url URL] [--output OUTPUT] [--limit LIMIT] [--language LANGUAGE] [--sort SORT]

Download Youtube comments without using the Youtube API

optional arguments:
  --help, -h                             Show this help message and exit
  --youtubeid YOUTUBEID, -y YOUTUBEID    ID of Youtube video for which to download the comments
  --url URL, -u URL                      Youtube URL for which to download the comments
  --output OUTPUT, -o OUTPUT             Output filename (output format is line delimited JSON)
  --pretty, -p                           Change the output format to indented JSON
  --limit LIMIT, -l LIMIT                Limit the number of comments
  --language LANGUAGE, -a LANGUAGE       Language for Youtube generated text (e.g. en)
  --sort SORT, -s SORT                   Whether to download popular (0) or recent comments (1). Defaults to 1

For example:

youtube-comment-downloader --url https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScMzIvxBSi4 --output ScMzIvxBSi4.json

or using the Youtube ID:

youtube-comment-downloader --youtubeid ScMzIvxBSi4 --output ScMzIvxBSi4.json

For Youtube IDs starting with - (dash) you will need to run the script with: -y=idwithdash or --youtubeid=idwithdash

Usage as library

You can also use this script as a library. For instance, if you want to print out the 10 most popular comments for a particular Youtube video you can do the following:

from itertools import islice
from youtube_comment_downloader import *
downloader = YoutubeCommentDownloader()
comments = downloader.get_comments_from_url('https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScMzIvxBSi4', sort_by=SORT_BY_POPULAR)
for comment in islice(comments, 10):
    print(comment)