Convenient command line and library wrapper for youtube-dl.

Latest release 20210906: New -j jobs options to control parallelism, default 4.

The youtube-dl tool and associated youtube_dl Python module are very useful for downloading media from various websites. However, as an end user who almost never streams because of my soggy internet link, I find fetching several items is quite serial and visually noisy.

This module provides a command line tool ydl which:

• runs multiple downloads in parallel with progress bars
• prints the downloaded filename as each completes

Interactively, I keep this shell function:

ydl(){
  ( set -ue
    dldir=${DL:-$HOME/dl}/v
    [ -d "$dldir" ] || set-x mkdir "$dldir"
    cd "$dldir"
    command ydl ${1+"$@"}
  )
}

which runs the downloader in my preferred download area without tedious manual cding.

Function main(argv=None)

Main command line.

Class OverYDL

A manager for multiple YDL instances.

Method OverYDL.queue(self, *a, **kw)

Queue a fetch of url and return a Result.

Method OverYDL.queue_iter(self, urls)

Queue the URLs of the iterable urls, essentially a convenience wrapper for the queue method. Returns a list of the Results for each queued URL.

Method OverYDL.report(self, Rs=None)

Wrapper returning cs.result.report(.Rs). Rs defaults to list(self.Rs, the accumulated Results.

Class YDL

Manager for a download process.

Method YDL.__init__(self, url, *, fstags, upd=None, tick=None, over_progress=None, sem, **kw_opts)

Initialise the manager.

Parameters:

• url: the URL to download
• fstags: mandatory keyword argument, a cs.fstags.FSTags instance
• upd: optional cs.upd.Upd instance for progress reporting
• tick: optional callback to indicate state change
• over_progress: an OverProgress to which to add each new Progress instance
• sem: a shared Semaphore governing download parallelism
• kw_opts: other keyword arguments are used to initialise the options for the underlying YoutubeDL instance

Method YDL.bg(self)

Return the Result for this download, starting the download if necessary.

Property YDL.output_filename

The target output filename.

Method YDL.process_info(ie_result)

Process info hook called by youtube_dl, seems uncalled :-(

Class YDLCommand(cs.cmdutils.BaseCommand)

ydl command line implementation.

Command line usage:

Usage: ydl [-f] [-j jobs] {URLs|-}...
    -f      Force download - do not use the cache.
    -j jobs Number of jobs (downloads) to run in parallel.
            Default: 4

Method YDLCommand.apply_defaults(self)

Initial defaults options.

Method YDLCommand.apply_opts(self, opts)

Command line main switches.

Method YDLCommand.main(self, argv)

Command line main programme.

Release Log

Release 20210906: New -j jobs options to control parallelism, default 4.

Release 20210404: Update for recent cs.cmdutils change.

Release 20210306: Assorted internal updates.

Release 20200621:

• YDL.run: just catch the youtube_dl DownloadError.
• Changes to the default output filename template.
• Other minor internal changes.

Release 20200615.1: Add usage message to docstring.

Release 20200615:

• Initial "daemon" mode, suitable for "tail -f .ydld-queue | ydl -", handy for keeping around in a tmux session.
• Assorted small bugfixes.

Release 20200521: Initial PyPI release.