Simple script for downloading Youtube comments without using the Youtube API. The output is in line delimited JSON.
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
$ youtube-comment-downloader --help
usage: youtube-comment-downloader [--help] [--youtubeid YOUTUBEID] [--url URL] [--output OUTPUT] [--limit LIMIT] [--language LANGUAGE] [--sort SORT]
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
--url URL, -u URL Youtube URL for which to download the comments
--output OUTPUT, -o OUTPUT Output filename (output format is line delimited JSON)
--pretty, -p Change the output format to indented JSON
--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:
youtube-comment-downloader --url https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScMzIvxBSi4 --output ScMzIvxBSi4.json
or using the Youtube ID:
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
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)