YouTube Scraper

Table of Contents

• Why use this package
  • Timings
• Options
  • Example Options
• Example Code
  • Output
• Return Object Structure

Why use this package?

This is a YouTube scraper with zero dependencies. Everything has been coded to have a minimal footprint creating a small package that's aimed at being as fast as possible.

Timings

These are the timings I would get on average over 20 tests, ofcourse the Fetch time depends on how good your connection is to YouTube and how loaded YouTube is at that point.

Type	Fetch Time	Processing Time
video	585.632055 ms	3.117175 ms
channel	494.026065 ms	not tested
playlist	569.424545 ms	not tested

Check here

Options

Property	Default	Description
language	en	Set the language that you would like for results to be returned in. A list of supported language types can be found here.
searchType	video	Which type to search for on YouTube, supported types are any, channel, live, movie, playlist and video

"Sort by" has not been implemented as of now.
All data is sorted in the default order that YouTube returns these in.

Example Options

You can set the global language which YouTube should return results in or set the return language per search/request:

import youtube from '@yimura/scraper'

// This will set the language to French from France globally
const yt = new youtube.default('fr-FR');

// Sets the language communicated to YouTube to Dutch from Belgium for this search
const results = yt.search('Never gonna give you up', {
    language: 'nl-BE',
    searchType: 'video' // video is the default search type
});

Example Code

CommonJS:

const Scraper = require('@yimura/scraper').default;

const youtube = new Scraper();

youtube.search('Never gonna give you up').then(results => {
    console.log(results.videos[0]);
});

ESModule:

import youtube from '@yimura/scraper'

const yt = new youtube.default();
yt.search('Never gonna give you up').then(results => {
    console.log(results.videos[0]);
});

Output

{
    channel: {
        name: 'Official Rick Astley',
        link: 'https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw',
        verified: true
    },
    description: "Rick Astley's official music video for “Never Gonna Give You Up” Listen to Rick Astley: https://RickAstley.lnk.to/_listenYD Subscribe ...",
    duration: 213,
    duration_raw: "3:33",
    id: 'dQw4w9WgXcQ',
    link: 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ',
    thumbnail: 'https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQhqdefault.jpg',
    shareLink: 'https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ',
    title: 'Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Video)',
    uploaded: '11 years ago',
    views: 788551856
}

Return Object Structure

{
    channels: [
        {
            channelId: String,
            description: String,
            link: String,
            thumbnails: [
                {
                    url: String,
                    width: Number,
                    height: Number
                }
            ],
            subscribed: Boolean,
            uploadedVideos: Number,
            verified: Boolean
        }
    ],
    playlists: [
        {
            preview: [
                {
                    duration: Number,
                    duration_raw: String,
                    views: Number,
                    id: String,
                    link: String,
                    thumbnail: String,
                    title: String,
                    shareLink: String
                }
            ],
            id: String,
            link: String,
            thumbnail: String,
            title: String,
            videoCount: Number
        }
    ],
    streams: [
        {
            watching: Number,
            channel: {
                name: String,
                link: String,
                verified: Boolean
            },
            id: String,
            link: String,
            thumbnail: String,
            title: String,
            shareLink: String
        }
    ],
    videos: [
        {
            description: String,
            duration: Number,
            duration_raw: String,
            uploaded: String,
            views: Number,
            channel: {
                name: String,
                link: String,
                verified: Boolean
            },
            id: String,
            link: String,
            thumbnail: String,
            title: String,
            shareLink: String
        }
    ]
}