youtube-dl fails to use proxy

[patricklauer]

$ http_proxy="127.0.0.1:3128" youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4KV7e8kwbI
[youtube] Setting language
WARNING: unable to set language: <urlopen error [Errno 111] Connection refused>
[youtube] z4KV7e8kwbI: Downloading video webpage
ERROR: unable to download video webpage: <urlopen error [Errno 111] Connection refused>

--> of course it doesn't work if you don't use the proxy server ...

[h3xx]

Seems like this could be a bug in urllib or urllib2. Have you tried a simple script to test your proxy?

#!/usr/bin/python
import urllib2
import sys
url = sys.argv[1]
response = urllib2.urlopen(url)
html_string = response.read()
print html_string

[rg3]

As per the documentation, try to put the "http://" prefix before the host name.

http://rg3.github.com/youtube-dl/documentation.html#d5

[phihag]

Mmm, urllib2 seems ok with leaving out the http://. On which platform (Python version, Linux distribution) are you running youtube-dl? Can you update youtube-dl to 2012.02.26 and test with the new --verbose option? What does that output?

[rg3]

I just peeked at the code in urllib2 and you're completely right. It should go even as far back as Python 2.5. However, I distinctly remember having problems if I omitted the http:// prefix when I tested the feature after adding it. Could it be a subtle problem in youtube-dl's code? It could still be interesting to test with the prefix just in case.

[patricklauer]

Same with 2012.02.27 (running on Gentoo Linux / AMD64). The script from comment #1 hangs (which tells me that it does not respect the http_proxy env var)

[AR0x7E7]

youtube-dl --version:
2012.02.27

uname -a;
Linux MacBookUbuntuPro 3.0.0-17-generic #30-Ubuntu SMP Thu Mar 8 20:45:39 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

http_proxy="http://72.64.146.135:8080" youtube-dl www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjli3hj0ZkM

Works like a charm!

[rg3]

AR0x7E7, could you try without the http:// prefix to verify it still works or if it makes any difference?

[AR0x7E7]

http_proxy="72.64.146.135:8080" youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOS9aOIXPEk

Still works perfectly!

Btw:
python --version:
Python 2.7.2+