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]
                                  [--format {jsonl,json,csv,scsv}] [--limit LIMIT] [--language LANGUAGE] [--sort SORT]

Download Youtube comments without using the Youtube API

options:
  --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 (optional, defaults to video_id.ext)
  --format {jsonl,json,csv,scsv}, -f {jsonl,json,csv,scsv}
                                             Output format: jsonl, json, csv (comma), or scsv (semicolon).
  --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 (automatically saves to ScMzIvxBSi4.jsonl):

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

or using a custom filename and/or format (e.g., CSV):

youtube-comment-downloader --youtubeid ScMzIvxBSi4 --output comments.csv --format csv

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)