How to use youtube-dl from a python program?

python, youtube-dl

Solution

It's not difficult and actually documented:

import youtube_dl

ydl = youtube_dl.YoutubeDL({'outtmpl': '%(id)s.%(ext)s'})

with ydl:
    result = ydl.extract_info(
        'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc',
        download=False # We just want to extract the info
    )

if 'entries' in result:
    # Can be a playlist or a list of videos
    video = result['entries'][0]
else:
    # Just a video
    video = result

print(video)
video_url = video['url']
print(video_url)

Problem

I would like to access the result of the following shell command, ``` youtube-dl -g "www.youtube.com/..." ``` to print its output `direct url` to a file, from within a python program. This is what I have tried: ``` import youtube-dl fromurl="www.youtube.com/..." geturl=youtube-dl.magiclyextracturlfromurl(fromurl) ``` Is that possible? I tried to understand the mechanism in the source but got lost: `youtube_dl/__init__.py`, `youtube_dl/youtube_DL.py`, `info_extractors` ...

Original source

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