YouTube video and audio stream extractor for react native.
This module is a port of ytdl-core. All the functionality was ported successfully except for a couple of methods which react native does not support(such as node's streaming api).
npm install react-native-ytdl
import ytdl from "react-native-ytdl"
const youtubeURL = 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04GiqLjRO3A';
const urls = await ytdl(youtubeURL, { quality: 'highestaudio' });
console.log(urls)Attempts to get a downloadable link from the given YouTube URL. Returns a list of URLs with required headers. options can have the following keys
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quality- Video quality to download. Can be an itag value, a list of itag values, orhighest/lowest/highestaudio/lowestaudio/highestvideo/lowestvideo.highestaudio/lowestaudio/highestvideo/lowestvideoall prefer audio/video only respectively. Defaults tohighest, which prefers formats with both video and audio.A typical video's formats will be sorted in the following way using
quality: 'highest'itag container quality codecs bitrate audio bitrate 18 mp4 360p avc1.42001E, mp4a.40.2 696.66KB 96KB 137 mp4 1080p avc1.640028 4.53MB 248 webm 1080p vp9 2.52MB 136 mp4 720p avc1.4d4016 2.2MB 247 webm 720p vp9 1.44MB 135 mp4 480p avc1.4d4014 1.1MB 134 mp4 360p avc1.4d401e 593.26KB 140 mp4 mp4a.40.2 128KBformat 18 at 360p will be chosen first since it's the highest quality format with both video and audio.
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filter- Used to filter the list of formats to choose from. Can beaudioandvideoorvideoandaudioto filter formats that contain both video and audio,videoto filter for formats that contain video, orvideoonlyfor formats that contain video and no additional audio track. Can also beaudiooraudioonly. You can give a filtering function that gets called with each format available. This function is given theformatobject as its first argument, and should return true if the format is preferable.// Example with custom function. ytdl(url, { filter: format => format.container === 'mp4' })
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format- Primarily used to download specific video or audio streams. This can be a specificformatobject returned fromgetInfo.- Supplying this option will ignore the
filterandqualityoptions since the format is explicitly provided.
- Supplying this option will ignore the
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range- A byte range in the form{start: INT, end: INT}that specifies part of the file to download, ie {start: 10355705, end: 12452856}. Not supported on segmented (DASH MPD, m3u8) formats.- This downloads a portion of the file, and not a separately spliced video.
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begin- What time in the video to begin. Supports formats00:00:00.000,0ms, 0s, 0m, 0h, or number of milliseconds. Example:1:30,05:10.123,10m30s. -
requestOptions- Anything to merge into the request options which fetch is called with, such asheaders. -
highWaterMark- How much of the video download to buffer into memory. See node's docs for more. Defaults to 512KB. -
lang- The 2 character symbol of a language. Default isen.
Use this if you only want to get metainfo from a video.
Gets metainfo from a video. Includes additional formats, and ready to download deciphered URL. This is what the ytdl() function uses internally.
Once you have received metadata from a video with the ytdl.getInfo function, you may pass that information along with other options to this function.
Can be used if you'd like to choose a format yourself with the options above. Throws an Error if it fails to find any matching format.
// Example of choosing a video format.
let info = await ytdl.getInfo(videoID);
let format = ytdl.chooseFormat(info.formats, { quality: '134' });
console.log('Format found!', format);If you'd like to work with only some formats, you can use the filter option above.
// Example of filtering the formats to audio only.
let info = await ytdl.getInfo(videoID);
let audioFormats = ytdl.filterFormats(info.formats, 'audioonly');
console.log('Formats with only audio: ' + audioFormats.length);Returns true if the given string satisfies YouTube's ID format.
Returns true if able to parse out a valid video ID.
Returns a video ID from a YouTube URL. Throws an Error if it fails to parse an ID.
Same as the above ytdl.getURLVideoID(), but can be called with the video ID directly, in which case it returns it. This is what ytdl uses internally.
Throws an Error if it fails to parse an ID.
ytdl cannot download videos that fall into the following
- Regionally restricted (requires a proxy)
- Private (if you have access, requires cookies)
- Rentals (if you have access, requires cookies)
Generated download links are valid for 6 hours, for the same IP address.
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 React Native modules available. Use the format objects returned from ytdl.getInfo to download specific streams to combine to fit your needs.
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. If you're getting the following error
Could not extract signature deciphering actions
Run the tests at test/irl-test.js located on the original node implementation ytdl-core just to make sure that this is actually an issue with ytdl-core.
mocha test/irl-test.js
These tests are not mocked, and they try to start downloading a few videos. If these fail, then it's time to debug.
For getting started with that, you can look at the extractActions() function in /lib/sig.js.
For the sake of fast development time, It is better to debug on node than it is on react-native. When ytdl-core is working as expected, then you can port the necessary changes into react-native-ytdl
npm install react-native-ytdl@latestOr for Yarn users:
yarn add react-native-ytdl@latestMake sure you're installing the latest version of react-native-ytdl to keep up with the latest fixes.
