willtran11235 / youtube-comment-downloader

Simple script for downloading Youtube comments without using the Youtube API

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

Usage

$ youtube-comment-downloader --help
usage: youtube-comment-downloader [--help] [--youtubeid YOUTUBEID] [--output OUTPUT] [--limit LIMIT]

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
  --output OUTPUT, -o OUTPUT
                        Output filename (output format is line delimited JSON)
  --limit LIMIT, -l LIMIT
                        Limit the number of comments
  --sort SORT, -s SORT  Whether to download popular (0) or recent comments (1). Defaults to 1

For example:

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

Dependencies

• Python 2.7+
• requests
• lxml
• cssselect

The python packages can be installed with:

pip install -r requirements.txt