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Extract individual links from a single youtube playlist link using python

I need a python script that takes link to a single youtube playlist and then gives out a list containing the links to individual videos in the playlist.

I realize that same question was asked few years ago, but it was asked for python2.x and the codes in the answer don’t work properly. They are very weird, they work sometimes but give empty output once in a while(maybe some of the packages used there have been updated, I don’t know). I’ve included one of those code below.

If any of you don’t believe, run this code several times you’ll receive empty list once in a while, but most of the time it does the job of breaking down a playlist.

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup as bs
import requests

r = requests.get('https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3D7BFF1DDBDAAFE5')
page = r.text
soup=bs(page,'html.parser')
res=soup.find_all('a',{'class':'pl-video-title-link'})
for l in res:
    print(l.get("href"))

In case of some playlists the code just doesn’t work at all.

Also, if beautifulsoup can’t do the job, any other popular python library will do.

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Answer

It seems youtube loads sometimes different versions of the page, sometimes with html organized like you expected using links with pl-video-title-link class :

<td class="pl-video-title">
   <a class="pl-video-title-link yt-uix-tile-link yt-uix-sessionlink  spf-link " dir="ltr" href="/watch?v=GtWXOzsD5Fw&amp;list=PL3D7BFF1DDBDAAFE5&amp;index=101&amp;t=0s" data-sessionlink="ei=TJbjXtC8NYri0wWCxarQDQ&amp;feature=plpp_video&amp;ved=CGoQxjQYYyITCNCSmqHD_OkCFQrxtAodgqIK2ij6LA">
   Android Application Development Tutorial - 105 - Spinners and ArrayAdapter
   </a>
   <div class="pl-video-owner">
      de <a href="/user/thenewboston" class=" yt-uix-sessionlink      spf-link " data-sessionlink="ei=TJbjXtC8NYri0wWCxarQDQ&amp;feature=playlist&amp;ved=CGoQxjQYYyITCNCSmqHD_OkCFQrxtAodgqIK2ij6LA" >thenewboston</a>
   </div>
   <div class="pl-video-bottom-standalone-badge">
   </div>
</td>

Sometimes with data embedded in a JS variables and loaded dynamically :

window["ytInitialData"] = { .... very big json here .... };

For the second version, you will need to use regex to parse Javascript unless you want to use tools like selenium to grab the content after page load.

The best way is to use the official API which is straightforward to get the playlist items :

enable API screen

  • Click on Create Credentials / Youtube Data API v3 / Public data Create Credentials Popup Credential Type

  • Alternatively (For Credentials Creation) Go to Credentials / Create Credentials / API key

API key screen

  • install google api client for python :

      pip3 install --upgrade google-api-python-client

Use the API key in the script below. This script fetch playlist items for playlist with id PL3D7BFF1DDBDAAFE5, use pagination to get all of them, and re-create the link from the videoId and playlistID :

import googleapiclient.discovery
from urllib.parse import parse_qs, urlparse

#extract playlist id from url
url = 'https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3D7BFF1DDBDAAFE5'
query = parse_qs(urlparse(url).query, keep_blank_values=True)
playlist_id = query["list"][0]

print(f'get all playlist items links from {playlist_id}')
youtube = googleapiclient.discovery.build("youtube", "v3", developerKey = "YOUR_API_KEY")

request = youtube.playlistItems().list(
    part = "snippet",
    playlistId = playlist_id,
    maxResults = 50
)
response = request.execute()

playlist_items = []
while request is not None:
    response = request.execute()
    playlist_items += response["items"]
    request = youtube.playlistItems().list_next(request, response)

print(f"total: {len(playlist_items)}")
print([ 
    f'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v={t["snippet"]["resourceId"]["videoId"]}&list={playlist_id}&t=0s'
    for t in playlist_items
])

Output:

get all playlist items links from PL3D7BFF1DDBDAAFE5
total: 195
[
    'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUOWNXGRc6g&list=PL3D7BFF1DDBDAAFE5&t=0s', 
    'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=857zrsYZKGo&list=PL3D7BFF1DDBDAAFE5&t=0s', 
    'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da1jlmwuW_w&list=PL3D7BFF1DDBDAAFE5&t=0s',
    ...........
    'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j4prh3NAZE&list=PL3D7BFF1DDBDAAFE5&t=0s', 
    'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9ryE6GwhmA&list=PL3D7BFF1DDBDAAFE5&t=0s'
]
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