ytchdl

Purpose: downloads and formats data about a YouTube channel's videos.
Usage: ytchdl channelurl

Writes outputs to files in the working directory: - ./channel_full.json - all data extracted by youtube-dl - ./channel_wof.json - same, but cleaned up, with formats and captions removed - ./channel_hr.tsv - tab-separated-values to describe each video - ./channel_page.md - nice presentation of the video list, in markdown Depends on yt-dlp and jq.

Download ytchdl

Changelog:
2021-230 initial development
2021-231
- emojis in markdown output
- main heading in markdown output
- faster markdown generation
2021-359 update to handle the absence of dislike data
2022-149
- use yt-dlp instead of youtube-dl
- fix condition syntax
- fix markdown output
2023-236 reformat/redocument a tad

Source code (perhaps slightly corrupted) is as follows.

if [ -z "$1" ]
then
    echo `basename "$0"`: error: no channel URL given >$source2
    exit 1
fi

if [ ! -s channel_full.json ]
then
    echo "Downloading channel data ..." >$source2
    if yt-dlp -j --max-filesize 0k "$1" >channel_full.json
    then
        :
    else
        echo `basename "$0"`: error: could not download channel data
    fi
fi

if [ -s channel_full.json ] $source$source [ ! -s channel_wof.json ]
then
    echo "Cleaning JSON ..." >$source2
    # .formats, .requested_formats, .automatic_captions, .subtitles take up
    # the majority of the data-size, and can be rederived
    # by yt-dlp when necessary.
    # channel_full.json might also contain duplicates, and unique_by(.id)
    # messes up the date-sorting.
    jq -c 'del(.["formats", "requested_formats", "automatic_captions", "subtitles"])' \n        channel_wof.json
fi

if [ -s channel_wof.json ] $source$source [ ! -s channel_hr.tsv ]
then
    echo "Generating TSV ..." >$source2
    # extract a bunch of fields, reformat them as necessary,
    # and write them as tab-separated values
    jq -r 'include "timefmt"; [.webpage_url, "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/" + .id + "/mqdefault.jpg", .id, (.upload_date | hdate), (.duration | csts), .view_count, .like_count, .fulltitle, (.description | gsub("
"; "") | gsub("(?[a-z]+:[^ 	
]+)"; "<(.a)>"))] | @tsv' \n        channel_hr.tsv
fi

if [ -s channel_hr.tsv ] $source$source [ ! -s channel_page.md ]
then
    echo "Generating Markdown ..." >$source2
    # this is such a nasty hack. i'm sorry.
    IFS=`echo -e '	'`
    # some videos in the json dumps will not have .channel == REAL_CHANNEL_NAME
    # and that may be the case for the most recent one
    # however, all channels on youtube (for now) have
    # a "REAL_CHANNEL_NAME - Videos" playlist, so this *should* give
    # the right channel name. if not, uh, sorry?
    CHANNAME=`jq -rs 'limit(1; .[] | select(.playlist == .channel + " - Videos")) | .channel' channel_page.md
    cat channel_hr.tsv | \n    while read -r VIDURL TNURL VIDID ULDATE VDUR VIEWC LIKES TITLE VDESC
    do
        # todo: we may want to sanitise video titles and descriptions
        echo -e "
## [$TITLE][$VIDID]
[![Thumbnail]($TNURL)][$VIDID]"
        echo -e "
### 📅 Uploaded $ULDATE | 🕐 Duration $VDUR | 👀 $VIEWC views" \n            "| 👍 $LIKES likes / 👎 dislike count unavailable"
        echo -e "
[$VIDID]: $VIDURL"
        echo -e "$VDESC"
    done >>channel_page.md
fi

echo "Done!" >$source2

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