[Req] add symlinks from uploader -> uploader_id on youtube videos

[freedenizen]

It would be nice if there was a way to automatically create symlinks from the youtube uploader name (which the uploader can change at any time) to the uploader_id which is fixed.

[jaimeMF]

What do you mean with "symlink"?

[freedenizen]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link

take this youtube account: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCPetHGyyi1LqbMArojegyA

now if I record it with just the channel id I won't really remember who it was, but the channel name can change over time it would be nice if it did something like

ln -s channel_id channel

[phihag]

@freedenizen Can you provide a little bit more context? By default, both channel name and channel ID are just fields in the output. What are you doing with them?

Also, how would the proposed interface look like? Can you state a help text and an example invocation?

[freedenizen]

Sure, I can do my best, the main problem with this is that I'm not sure if it will work on windows machines as I don't know if there is a good way to develop symlinks on their file systems, but that aside here is sorta how I think it should work.

Add a new output option, something like %(uploader_with_symlink)s although maybe named better. If that is used then when %(uploader)s != %(uploader_id)s a symlink will need to be created. This is where it gets complicated.

Take a uploader_id of: aaabbbcccddd
uploader of: John Doe
Let's say I'm using: %(uploader_with_symlink)s/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s
Then the result will be
Real Directory: ./aaabbbcccddd/
Symlink: John Doe -> aaabbbcccddd
If the user changes their display name to: Something Fancy and I download a new video, the video will still end up in ./aaabbbcccddd/ but a new symlink is made Something Fancy -> aaabbbcccddd

This works fine for the situation where %(uploader_with_symlink)s is used in a directory path. I'm still thinking of how this should play out where it is used in a filename context, perhaps the filename is created using the uploader_id and then a symlink to the file is created with the uploader instead.