How to download youtube playlist info using youtube-dl in a python program?

[abhiank]

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Question

I'm trying to download info about all items in a youtube playlist. I've figured out the command to execute on the terminal but I'm unable to figure out its equivalent code when embedded in a python program.

Here's the terminal command I use :
youtube-dl --dump-single-json --flat-playlist PLFftu4DSZBSwrGiOlZXKHRSoKArsKSuz9 > /Users/abhimanyu/Desktop/list.json

Here's how far I got in embedded python :

import youtube_dl

ydl = youtube_dl.YoutubeDL({'dump_single_json': 'True',
                            'extract_flat' : 'True'})

with ydl:
    result = ydl.download([
        'https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFftu4DSZBSwrGiOlZXKHRSoKArsKSuz9'])

print(len(result))

I also tried ydl.extract_info but that starts fetching info about each video individually which I don't need.

[dstftw]

Arguments are bools not strings.

[abhiank]

Oh thank you @dstftw. That was a really silly mistake 😅. I'm still kinda new to Python so the syntax confuses me sometimes.

Ps. It worked!

[abhiank]

Hey @dstftw, I'm stuck again. I'm unable to capture the json output into a variable. In the current code, result only has a value of 0 and not the json which I was expecting. How do I do that?

[silverbacknet]

When downloading, 0 means success. Anything else means an error. (Classic C behavior.)

You were on the right track, result = ydl.extract_info(url, False) should give what you want. Default is to download everything, which you don't want, thus download=False.

[abhiank]

Thank you @silverbacknet