Faster downloading using alternative libraries

[deepesh-agarwal]

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Question

On quest for faster downloads in my custom script using youtube-dl as a library, I stumbled upon these https://github.com/juancarlospaco/faster-than-requests/ , https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19724222/pycurl-attachments-and-progress-functions modules which claim to accelrate python downloads.

My questions are:

A). Can youtube-dl use one of these to improve download speeds or it is already optimized?
B). Is there a way to track progress of downloads from external downloaders in the custom python script?

Thanks

[blackjack4494]

A. Faster-than-requests won't improve download speeds but rather send requests faster. However they have no support for Python2 (nor 32bit if that is still important) and from what I got is that core maintainers are focused on compatibility.
Download speeds should be fine tho. You could try using aria2c as external downloader as that should about max out your download link (or the upload of the server)

B. In what custom python script?

[deepesh-agarwal]

@blackjack4494 My python script uses hooks provided by youtube-dl module to show download progress, something as shown below. When using aria2c I guess it won't be possible to grab this progress inside my script, need a solution to that?

def my_hook(d):
    if d['status'] == 'finished':
        file_tuple = os.path.split(os.path.abspath(d['filename']))
        print("Done downloading {}".format(file_tuple[1]))
        handle_finished(d)
    if d['status'] == 'downloading':
        print(d['filename'], d['_percent_str'], d['_eta_str'])