npm install yt-stream
YT-Stream is a package which can download and search YouTube video's. YT-Stream is based on the codes of ytdl-core and play-dl and further extended to create a package which met to my needs.
YT-Stream allows both API (youtubei) and scrape methods to be used. By default the api method will always be used. To change this, an api key is required, which can be obtained from the Google Developer Console (YouTube Data API v3). This api key can be set by using the setApiKey
function. This function requires one argument, which is the api key. Setting the api key does not automatically make the package use the api instead of the scrape method. This must be set by using the setPreference
function. This function requires one argument, which is the method, and has an optional argument, which is the client which the package should use when making an api request. YT-Stream allows you to make an api request with a IOS or Android client, which can be manually set inside the second argument of the setPreference
function. By default, a random client will be choosen. The client which the package uses does have impact on the data it can receive. If you have application restrictions enabled for your api key, you need to set a client manually.
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
ytstream.setApiKey(`My Secret api key`); // Only sets the api key (not required)
ytstream.setPreference('api', 'ANDROID'); // Tells the package to use the api and use a android client for requests
...
ytstream.setPreference('scrape'); // Tells the package to use the scrape methods instead of the api, even if an api key has been provided
You can download a video by using the stream
function. The stream
function has two parameters; the info
or url
parameter and the options
parameter. The options
parameter is not required. The first parameter must include the video url or the info that has been received from the info
function. The stream
function will return a Promise
. The Promise
will be fullfilled if the video was successfully downloaded. If there was an error, the Promise
will be rejected with the error. Once the Promise
gets fullfilled it will return the Stream
class. The most important properties in the Stream
class are:
- stream: The Readable stream
- url: The url to download the video or song
- video_url: The YouTube video url
Optional options are:
- type: If your download preference is video or audio. If one of the types does not exists, it will download the other download type.
- quality: The quality of the video (high or low)
- highWaterMark: The highWaterMark for the Readable stream
- download: A boolean which defines whether to automatically download and push the chunks in the Readable stream (
stream
property of theStream
class) the video or not (defaulttrue
)
Warning: By setting the
download
option tofalse
, it is not guaranteed that the provided url contains the requested video/audio. Make sure to check for any possible location headers when making a request to this url.
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
const fs = require('fs');
(async () => {
const stream = await ytstream.stream(`https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ`, {
quality: 'high',
type: 'audio',
highWaterMark: 1048576 * 32,
download: true
});
stream.stream.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('some_song.mp3'));
console.log(stream.video_url);
console.log(stream.url);
})();
YT-Stream also has a search function. You can easily search a song by using the search
function. The search
function has one parameter which is the query
to search. The query
parameter is required. The search
function will return a Promise
which will be fullfilled if there were no errors while trying to search. The Promise
will return an Array
with the amount of video's that were found. The items in the Array
are the video's with the Video
class. The most important properties of the Video
class are:
- url: The video url
- id: The id of the video
- author: The author of the video
- title: The title of the video
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
(async () => {
const results = await ytstream.search(`Rick Astley Never Gonna Give You Up`);
console.log(results[0].url); // Output: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
console.log(results[0].id); // Output: dQw4w9WgXcQ
console.log(results[0].author); // Output: Rick Astley
console.log(results[0].title); // Output: Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Music Video)
})();
You can also get information about a specific video. You can use the info
function to do this. The info
function has one parameter which is the url
and is required. The info
function will return a Promise
which will be fullfilled when the info successfully was received. The Promise
returns the YouTubeData
class. The most important properties of the YouTubeData
class are:
- url: The video url
- id: The id of the video
- author: The author of the video
- title: The title of the video
- uploaded: When the video was uploaded
- description: An object of descriptions (short or full)
- duration: The duration of the video in seconds
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
(async () => {
const info = await ytstream.getInfo(`https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ`);
console.log(info.url); // Output: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
console.log(info.id); // Output: dQw4w9WgXcQ
console.log(info.author); // Output: Rick Astley
console.log(info.title); // Output: Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Music Video)
console.log(info.uploaded); // Output: 2009-10-24
console.log(info.description); // Output: 'The official video for “Never Gonna Give You Up”...'
console.log(info.duration); // Output: 212000
})();
You can get information about a specific playlist. You can use the getPlaylist
function for this. The getPlaylist
function requires one parameter which is the url
. The getPlaylist
function returns Promise
which will be fullfilled when the playlist information has successfully been received. The Promise
returns the Playlist
class. The most important properties of the Playlist
class are:
- videos: An
Array
of all the video's (thePlaylistVideo
class is used for the video's) - title: The title of the playlist
- author: The author of the playlist
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
(async () => {
const info = await ytstream.getPlaylist(`https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk-dXGDrKWvZMVKjPtGaIqqI5eg3U7KSEA`);
console.log(info.videos); // Output: [Array]
console.log(info.title); // Output: Some playlist title
console.log(info.author); // Output: Some playlist author
})();
You can easily set a user agent by changing the userAgent
property to a user agent.
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
ytstream.userAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:94.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/94.0";
It is possible to add custom headers which will be added to each request made. This is possible by using the setGlobalHeaders
function.
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
ytstream.setGlobalHeaders({
'Accept-Language': 'en-US,en;q=0.5'
});
By default, the YT-Stream package automatically handles all cookies. This is being handled by a custom agent. The settings of this agent and the cookies can be configured. This can be done by creating a new instance of the YTStreamAgent
and changing the settings of this. The first argument of the constructor should eiither contain an array of cookies you'd like to add inside the request or a string which represents the file containing the cookies which will be used and synced. If you don't want to add any cookies, you can use an empty array here. The second argument of the constructor should contain an object with the custom settings for the agent. This custom agent can then be set by using the setGlobalAgent
function.
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
const agent = new ytstream.YTStreamAgent([{
key: 'SOCS',
value: 'CAI',
domain: 'youtube.com',
expires: 'Infinity',
sameSite: 'lax',
httpOnly: false,
hostOnly: false,
secure: true,
path: '/'
}], {
localAddress: '127.0.0.1',
keepAlive: true,
keepAliveMsecs: 5e3
});
ytstream.setGlobalAgent(agent);
The cookies can afterwards be removed by using the removeCookies
function of the YTStreamAgent
class. The removeCookies
function provides one optional argument which should be a boolean. The boolean determines whether all cookies shall be removed (forced) or only the cookies which were cached from previous requests.
const agent = new ytstream.YTStreamAgent([{
key: 'SOCS',
value: 'CAI',
domain: 'youtube.com',
expires: 'Infinity',
sameSite: 'lax',
httpOnly: false,
hostOnly: false,
secure: true,
path: '/'
}], {
localAddress: '127.0.0.1',
keepAlive: true,
keepAliveMsecs: 5e3
});
agent.removeCookies(false) // Only removes cached cookies
agent.removeCookies(true) // Also removes manually set cookies inside the constructor
You can also sync the cookies with a file. The cookies inside this file will be imported and if YouTube sets new cookies or updates existing ones, these will be changed inside this file as well. You can use the syncFile
function to synchronize a file containing the cookies. This file must be a json file and should contain an array with the cookies inside of it. The syncFile
function requires one argument, which should be the path to the file. The path should either be absolute or relative from the root folder of the process. Otherwise the agent won't be able to find the file.
const path = require('path');
const agent = new ytstream.YTStreamAgent([], {
localAddress: '127.0.0.1',
keepAlive: true,
keepAliveMsecs: 5e3
});
agent.syncFile(path.join(__dirname, `./cookies.json`)) // This is an absolute path which will always work
agent.syncFile(`./cookies.json`) // This is a relative path which will only work if the cookies.json file is inside the root folder of the process
You can validate a YouTube url by using the validateURL
function. The function requires one parameter which is the string to check whether it is a valid YouTube url or not.
Important: This also validates playlists, to only validate video's use the
validateVideoURL
function.
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
console.log(ytstream.validateURL('SomeString')) // Output: false
console.log(ytstream.validateURL('https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ')); // Output: true
You can validate a YouTube video url by using the validateVideoURL
function. The function requires one parameter which is the string to check whether it is a valid YouTube video url or not.
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
console.log(ytstream.validateVideoURL('SomeString')) // Output: false
console.log(ytstream.validateVideoURL('https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ')); // Output: true
You can validate a YouTube video ID by using the validateID
function. The function requires one parameter which is the string to check whether it is a valid YouTube video ID or not.
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
console.log(ytstream.validateID('SomeString')) // Output: false
console.log(ytstream.validateID('dQw4w9WgXcQ')); // Output: true
You can validate a YouTube playlist url by using the validatePlaylistURL
function. The function requires one parameter which is the string to check whether it is a valid YouTube playlist url or not.
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
console.log(ytstream.validatePlaylistURL('SomeString')) // Output: false
console.log(ytstream.validatePlaylistURL('https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk-dXGDrKWvZMVKjPtGaIqqI5eg3U7KSEA')); // Output: true
You can validate a YouTube playlist ID by using the validatePlaylistID
function. The function requires one parameter which is the string to check whether it is a valid YouTube playlist ID or not.
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
console.log(ytstream.validatePlaylistID('SomeString')) // Output: false
console.log(ytstream.validatePlaylistID('PLk-dXGDrKWvZMVKjPtGaIqqI5eg3U7KSEA')); // Output: true
You can easily convert a YouTube url to a YouTube ID by using the getID
function. The function requires one parameter which is the string to get the YouTube ID from. If the string is an invalid YouTube url, the function will return undefined
.
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
console.log(ytstream.getID('https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ')); // Output: dQw4w9WgXcQ
You can easily convert a YouTube video ID to a YouTube video url by using the getURL
function. The function requires one parameter which is the string to get the YouTube video url from. If the string is an invalid YouTube video ID, the function will return undefined
.
const ytstream = require('yt-stream');
console.log(ytstream.getURL('dQw4w9WgXcQ')); // Output: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ