Making a search without downloading anything

[mertyildiran]

Hi, I know it's possible to make a search with this command: youtube-dl "ytsearch:dank memes compilation"

I would like to be able to just make a search and get the URLs and Titles but not download anything.

My goal is using youtube-dl as a library or a tool in my project Dragonfire. I know youtube-dl is not a search tool but a downloader. But youtube-dl is maybe the only tool that guarantee to be always up to date with YouTube. So youtube-dl is the best option for such a task even if it's not the main purpose.

When I looked up to the source code, I found this function which is handling the request. So I have imported that part and tried to use it:

>>> from youtube_dl.extractor.youtube import YoutubeSearchIE
>>> a = YoutubeSearchIE()
>>> a._get_n_results('PewDiePie',1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py", line 2497, in _get_n_results
    query={'spf': 'navigate'})
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 666, in _download_json
    encoding=encoding, data=data, headers=headers, query=query)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 634, in _download_webpage
    res = self._download_webpage_handle(url_or_request, video_id, note, errnote, fatal, encoding=encoding, data=data, headers=headers, query=query)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 531, in _download_webpage_handle
    urlh = self._request_webpage(url_or_request, video_id, note, errnote, fatal, data=data, headers=headers, query=query)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 492, in _request_webpage
    self.to_screen('%s: %s' % (video_id, note))
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 691, in to_screen
    self._downloader.to_screen('[%s] %s' % (self.IE_NAME, msg))
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'to_screen'

I got an error probably because it's not suppose to be used as the way I tried to use. So if it's not possible to use youtube-dl in such a way then this issue is a feature request 😄

^{P.S. if the developers guide me then maybe I can implement this feature by myself and send a pull request...}

[dstftw]

https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl#embedding-youtube-dl

info = ydl.extract_info('ytsearch:dank memes compilation', download=False, ie_key='YoutubeSearch')
// process info

[mertyildiran]

@dstftw thank you so much, this solved my problem:

from __future__ import unicode_literals
import youtube_dl

info = youtube_dl.YoutubeDL({}).extract_info('ytsearch:dank memes compilation', download=False, ie_key='YoutubeSearch')
info['entries'][0]['title']
info['entries'][0]['id']