ytdl-web

Side project - wrap a web page around ytdl, so that I can start downloads from anywhere and have them auto-saved to the network drive.

I see youtube and similar links all the time, and want to view them on the TV minus ads, or maybe just defer watching. This little app uses a home server with SMB connection to my NAS to save. Super basic web wrapper around YTDL, with a bit of usefulness in the 'build list of target directories' logic and HTML.

Project goals

• Lightweight web pages that load fast, render properly on desktop, mobile and tablet.
• No javascript
• multiple concurrent downloads
• hands-off operation
• DIY the SQL part, just to learn it myself
• SQLite for jobs and logging

Current status

As of 10/18/2021, jobs and logging are saved into SQLite, enabling the addition of a polling/detail page, plus a table of recent jobs on the home page. Much nicer!

Works as intended:

• Downloads run in the background
• Basic Bootstrap v4 CSS, explicitly without JS. Input validation is most-basic, but looks OK.
• No file management, I expect clutter to accumulate.
• Utterly insecure - no input validation, so internal-network use only. Little Bobby Tables risk
• Added 'retry' button to failed downloads
• ported from youtube-dl to yt_dlp which seems maintained and quite nice.

Next steps

• Add pagination to index table
• Add intelligence to log display - collapse the middle if too long (accordion maybe)
• Widen margins on log display
• Add 'retry this download IFF rc != 0' kind of thing
• Parse debug logs or API to include download bytes and percentage to poll/detail. Progress bar!
• Move ad-hoc test code into proper unit tests.
• For iOS, add manifest or whatever so it looks a proper home screen icon.
• Productionize it - WSGI, debug off, reverse proxy. Cannot currently be exposed to the internet.
• Some sort of temp directory with automatic cleanup would be cool.
• Try v2 Flask beta?

Installation

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activatate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Run it

source venv/bin/activatate
python main.py

There's also run.sh for in the background.

Maintain it

TBD - yt_dlp has periodic updates, need to determine how to upgrade the library in place. There's a shell script now.

Tools and libraries

FastAPI lacks the built-in templates and html support, so Flask is perfect. We also, of course, use the Python API for yt_dlp.

Docs

• Flask for fastest dev
• yt_dlp embedding docs are excellent.
• CSS styles from Bootstrap v4
• Film icon from here
• Reset icon from here
• Favicon from here
• Form styled using this documentation