pyg - passable youtube grabber

pyg is a wrapper around the Youtube-API, and allows easy retrieval and analysis of specific data.

You need a working Youtube-API key in order to use this program. See the Google Developers Portal for more information on how to create one.

Features

Fetch Youtube data (metadata for videos, playlists, comments and captions) for channels as well as for collections of videos
Export data to Elasticsearch (videos and comments)
Build networks of recommended videos
Saves networks as .graphml files (can be imported into Gephi)

Requirements

Python >3.5
a Youtube API v3 key
a running Elasticsearch instance optional

Installation

Clone this repository and install it (preferably into a virtualenv):

$ git clone https://github.com/diggr/pyg
$ cd pyg
$ pip install .

Quickstart

Create a project folder and initialize project there:

$ mkdir pygproject
$ cd pygproject
$ pyg init

The last command creates template files for the project configuration (config.yml), fetch items (channels.yml, videos.yml) and networks (network.yml).

Configuration

Before you can start, you will need to add some information to the config.yml. Enter your Youtube API and credentials for your elasticsearch server key into the config.yml in order to proceed (the latter can be left blank if you don't intend to export to ES.

elasticsearch:
  prefix: pyg_        # default elasticsearch prefix
  url: ''             # url for elasticsearch server
network:
  proxy: ''           # if you use a proxy server, add it here
project:         
  dir: data           # you might change the data directory (or not)
  name: pyg_project   # change to your project name
youtube:
  api-key: ''         # add your YouTube API key here, otherwise nothing will work

Fetching Channels

The main configuration file (contentwise) is the channels.yml file in the root directory. It contains a list of all channel identifiers to be fetched.

Note: The channels can be grouped, to allow for a granular retrieval and update process.

main_group:
  - channel/UCdQHEqTxcFzjFCrq0o4V7dg
  - channel/UCI06ztiuPl-F9cSXsejMV8A
other_group:
  - channel/UCZzPA6tCoQAZNiddpE-xA_Q

After filling in your preferred chanels, run the fetch command to fetch the data using the Youtube API:

$ pyg fetch channels

If you are interested in only a specific group, you can give it a argument:

$ pyg fetch channels other_group

The channels will be fetched and saved into the projects data folder (which is specified in the previously configured config.yml) Each groups contents will be stored in a separate folder, and each channel in a separate zip archive (See e.g. olf42/zip_archive for a small zip file wrapper in Python).

Additonally provenance information is recorded an stored next to the zip files. The provenance information is stored in JSON-LD using the W3C PROV-O ontology. See diggr/provit for more information about recording, reading and processing provenance information.

Fetching Videos

It is also possible to just get single videos in a similar way. Add the videos IDs to your videos.yml:

my_video_list:
  - 5IsSpAOD6K8
  - qFLw26BjDZs

and use the fetch videos command:

$ pyg fetch videos

or for a specific group:

$ pyg fetch videos my_video_list

Search

You can search youtube an get a result list, which is ready to be pasted into the videos.yml file.

$ pyg search diggr --results 50

The --results flag sets the number of results (max: 50, default: 10).

Export to elasticsearch

The video and channel data can be exported to an elasticsearch instance to ease further processing and investigation of the fetched data. The export command will build a separate index for each data type (video related data and comment related data). If not specified otherwise, it will use the prefix defind in the config.yaml

The following command will build two indices: pyg_videos pyg_comments

$ pyg elasticsearch channels

The following command build two indices: my_prefix_videos my_prefix_comments

$ pyg elasticsearch channels other\_group my\_prefix

CAUTION: If an index already exists, it will be overwritten!

Fetching Updates

You can use the integrated update function to fetch new comments, videos and channels:

$ pyg update channels

The update script checks for each video in the channel if the comment count changed. If so, the current video data will be fetched from the Youtube API. New videos will also fetched.

An update-file for each channel in the form of <channel_name>_.zip will be created in the data folder.

Build recommended videos networks

Add your network configuration to the network.yml:

darksouls:
  type: 'videos'
  q: 'dark souls'
  depth: 2

By using the network command, you can create a graphml file, which can be used in Gephi or similar tools to be investigated.

$ pyg network darksouls

Usage behind a proxy Server

List proxy in config.yml

network:
  proxy: 123.4.5.6:7890

You are required to give the --proxy option in order to use the given proxy.

$ pyg --proxy network darksouls

Command line interface

pyg

    --proxy/--no-proxy (default: no-proxy)

    init

    fetch
        channels
            <group name>
            --comments/--no-comments (default: comments)
            --captions/--no-captions (default: captions)
        videos
            <group name>
            --comments/--no-comments (default: comments)
            --captions/--no-captions (default: captions)

    update
        channels
            <group name>

    network
        <network name>
        --api/--no-api (default: api)

    analysis
        user-stats
        channel-stats

    elasticsearch
        channels
            <group name>
            <index prefix>
        videos
            <group name>
            <index prefix>

Copyright

2019, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig info@ub.uni-leipzig.de

Authors

P. Mühleder muehleder@ub.uni-leipzig.de
F. Rämisch raemisch@ub.uni-leipzig.de

Licence

GNU General Public License v3 (Software)
CC-BY (Assets)