Henguin1001 / Subtitle-Scraper

Fetches the subtitles from a given youtube video

subtitle_scraper

The youtube api was being less of an API only allows limited access, so I created this. A module that will give you the captions/subitiles of a youtube video given the id

Install

 npm install subtitle_scraper

Example

The module is very simple and hopefully self-explanitory based on this Example (using an Applied Science Video, check it out if you have time)

var subtitle_scraper = require('subtitle_scraper');

// In goes the youtube id, you can find this in the video url (usually "v=...")
subtitle_scraper("l7qUo330J0M", function(err, arr, raw, url){
  // err contains any errors straight from the "Request" module
  // arr contains the json equivalent of the xml response of the subtitles
  // url is the url queryed to get the subtitles
  console.log(arr.transcript.text);
  // arr.transcript.text will probably be the only useful part of "arr"
});

Youtube will give data like so

<transcript>
  <text start="0" dur="4.61">
  today on Applied Science I&#39;d like to talk about my adventures in making deco
  </text>
  <text start="4.61" dur="4.13">
  tape if you haven&#39;t heard deco tape is sort of an alternative to the currently
  </text>
  <text start="8.74" dur="4.09">
  available adhesive tapes it actually works by a different mechanism and it&#39;s
  </text>
  <text start="12.83" dur="3.76">
  not really a commercial product yet but it&#39;s got a lot of press Insert of
  </text>
  <text start="16.59" dur="4.57">
  popular science articles and so it has a few attractive qualities that make it
  </text>
</transcript>

The module uses xml2js to parse the xml. If you think there is a better option feel free to make modifications. The results from xml2js:

{"transcript":
  {"text":[
    {"_":"today on Applied Science I'd like to\ntalk about my adventures in making deco","$":{"start":"0","dur":"4.61"}},
    {"_":"tape if you haven't heard deco tape is\nsort of an alternative to the currently","$":{"start":"4.61","dur":"4.13"}},
    {"_":"available adhesive tapes it actually\nworks by a different mechanism and it's","$":{"start":"8.74","dur":"4.09"}},
    {"_":"not really a commercial product yet but\nit's got a lot of press Insert of","$":{"start":"12.83","dur":"3.76"}},
    {"_":"popular science articles and so it has a\nfew attractive qualities that make it","$":{"start":"16.59","dur":"4.57"}}]
    }
  }

Bulk Request

It doesn't save any time, but this function allows you to get subtitles from a list of video ids. The function works just the same as before except with an array instead of a simple string and an options object is required

Here is an example:

var subtitle_scraper = require('subtitle_scraper');
// It is also possible now to provide a list of ids to get the subtitles for each
// a delay can be provide and probably should be
subtitle_scraper(["9XQfYKYO380", "KAm7qAKAXwI", "cwN983PnJoA"], { delay: 2000 }, function(err, arr){
  //arr contains an array of the same type of results as with the simple request in their respective order
  console.log(arr);
});

"options" can currently only provide a delay option. "delay" will result in a delay between requests

Note:

This module could stop working at any time really. If youtube changed the variable name of "ttsurl" to something like "banana" it would surely be useless.