ytdl-core

node-ytdl-core

Yet another youtube downloading module. This time written with only Javascript and a more node-friendly streaming interface.

For a CLI version of this, check out ytdl and pully.

Usage

var fs = require('fs');
var ytdl = require('ytdl-core');

ytdl('http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A02s8omM_hI')
  .pipe(fs.createWriteStream('video.flv'));

API

ytdl(url, options)

Attempts to download a video from the given url. Returns a readable stream. options can have the following keys

• quality - Video quality to download. Can be an itag value value, a list of itag values, or highest/lowest. Defaults to highest.
• filter - Can be video to filter for formats that contain video, videoonly for formats that contain video and no additional audio track. Can also be audio or audioonly. You can give a filtering function that gets called with each format available. Used to decide what format to download. This function is given the format object as its first argument, and should return true if the format is preferable.
• format - This can be a specific format object returned from getInfo. This is primarily used to download specific video or audio streams. Note: Supplying this option will ignore the filter and quality options since the format is explicitly provided.
• range - A byte range in the form INT-INT that specifies a part of the video to download. ie 10355705-12452856.
• requestOptions - Anything to merge into the request options which http.get() is called with, such as headers.
• request - A function that will be called for each request, instead of ytdl's internal method of making requests. Its signature looks like Function(url, options, [callback(error, body)]): http.ClientRequest

// Example with `filter` option.
ytdl(url, { filter: function(format) { return format.container === 'mp4'; } })
  .pipe(fs.createWriteStream('vide.mp4'));

Event: 'info'

• Object - Info.
• Object - Format.

Emitted when the a video's info hash is fetched. Along with the chosen format metadata to download. format.url might be different if start was given.

Info and format may look like this.

Event: 'response'

• http.ServerResponse - Response.

Emitted when the video response has been found, and has started downloading. Can be used to get the size of download. This is also emitted if there is an error with the download.

Stream#destroy()

Destroys the underlying connection.

ytdl.getInfo(url, [options], callback(err, info))

Use this if you only want to get metainfo from a video.

ytdl.downloadFromInfo(info, options)

Once you have received metadata from a video with the getInfo function, you may pass that info, along with other options to downloadFromInfo.

The returned readable stream emits these additional events:

Tips

Handling Separate Streams

Typically 1080p or better video does not have audio encoded with it. The audio must be downloaded separately and merged via an appropriate encoding library. ffmpeg is the most widely used tool, with many Node.js modules available. Use the format objects returned from ytdl.getInfo to download specific streams to combine to fit your needs.

What if it stops working?

Youtube updates their website all the time, it's not that rare for this to stop working. If it doesn't work for you and you're using the latest version, feel free to open up an issue. Make sure to check if there isn't one already with the same error.

If you'd like to help fix the issue, look at the type of error first. The most common one is

Could not extract signature deciphering actions

Run the tests at test/irl-test.js just to make sure that this is actually an issue with ytdl-core.

mocha test/irl-test.js

These tests are not mocked, and actually try to start downloading a few videos. If these fail, then it's time to debug.

Set debug: true in the tests. Debug will write the html5player file to test/files/html5player and will add an entry for its name in test/html5player.json. With the html5player downloaded, you can open it and figure how it's failing to extract the signature deciphering function.

And for the specifics on that, you can look at the extractActions() function in /lib/sig.js.

Install

npm install ytdl-core

Tests

Tests are written with mocha

npm test

License

MIT