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[youtubedl] / CONTRIBUTING.md
1 **Please include the full output of youtube-dl when run with `-v`**, i.e. **add** `-v` flag to **your command line**, copy the **whole** output and post it in the issue body wrapped in \`\`\` for better formatting. It should look similar to this:
2 ```
3 $ youtube-dl -v <your command line>
4 [debug] System config: []
5 [debug] User config: []
6 [debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj']
7 [debug] Encodings: locale cp1251, fs mbcs, out cp866, pref cp1251
8 [debug] youtube-dl version 2015.12.06
9 [debug] Git HEAD: 135392e
10 [debug] Python version 2.6.6 - Windows-2003Server-5.2.3790-SP2
11 [debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-75573-g1d0487f, ffprobe N-75573-g1d0487f, rtmpdump 2.4
12 [debug] Proxy map: {}
13 ...
14 ```
15 **Do not post screenshots of verbose log only plain text is acceptable.**
16
17 The output (including the first lines) contains important debugging information. Issues without the full output are often not reproducible and therefore do not get solved in short order, if ever.
18
19 Please re-read your issue once again to avoid a couple of common mistakes (you can and should use this as a checklist):
20
21 ### Is the description of the issue itself sufficient?
22
23 We often get issue reports that we cannot really decipher. While in most cases we eventually get the required information after asking back multiple times, this poses an unnecessary drain on our resources. Many contributors, including myself, are also not native speakers, so we may misread some parts.
24
25 So please elaborate on what feature you are requesting, or what bug you want to be fixed. Make sure that it's obvious
26
27 - What the problem is
28 - How it could be fixed
29 - How your proposed solution would look like
30
31 If your report is shorter than two lines, it is almost certainly missing some of these, which makes it hard for us to respond to it. We're often too polite to close the issue outright, but the missing info makes misinterpretation likely. As a committer myself, I often get frustrated by these issues, since the only possible way for me to move forward on them is to ask for clarification over and over.
32
33 For bug reports, this means that your report should contain the *complete* output of youtube-dl when called with the `-v` flag. The error message you get for (most) bugs even says so, but you would not believe how many of our bug reports do not contain this information.
34
35 If your server has multiple IPs or you suspect censorship, adding `--call-home` may be a good idea to get more diagnostics. If the error is `ERROR: Unable to extract ...` and you cannot reproduce it from multiple countries, add `--dump-pages` (warning: this will yield a rather large output, redirect it to the file `log.txt` by adding `>log.txt 2>&1` to your command-line) or upload the `.dump` files you get when you add `--write-pages` [somewhere](https://gist.github.com/).
36
37 **Site support requests must contain an example URL**. An example URL is a URL you might want to download, like `http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc`. There should be an obvious video present. Except under very special circumstances, the main page of a video service (e.g. `http://www.youtube.com/`) is *not* an example URL.
38
39 ### Are you using the latest version?
40
41 Before reporting any issue, type `youtube-dl -U`. This should report that you're up-to-date. About 20% of the reports we receive are already fixed, but people are using outdated versions. This goes for feature requests as well.
42
43 ### Is the issue already documented?
44
45 Make sure that someone has not already opened the issue you're trying to open. Search at the top of the window or browse the [GitHub Issues](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/search?type=Issues) of this repository. If there is an issue, feel free to write something along the lines of "This affects me as well, with version 2015.01.01. Here is some more information on the issue: ...". While some issues may be old, a new post into them often spurs rapid activity.
46
47 ### Why are existing options not enough?
48
49 Before requesting a new feature, please have a quick peek at [the list of supported options](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/README.md#options). Many feature requests are for features that actually exist already! Please, absolutely do show off your work in the issue report and detail how the existing similar options do *not* solve your problem.
50
51 ### Is there enough context in your bug report?
52
53 People want to solve problems, and often think they do us a favor by breaking down their larger problems (e.g. wanting to skip already downloaded files) to a specific request (e.g. requesting us to look whether the file exists before downloading the info page). However, what often happens is that they break down the problem into two steps: One simple, and one impossible (or extremely complicated one).
54
55 We are then presented with a very complicated request when the original problem could be solved far easier, e.g. by recording the downloaded video IDs in a separate file. To avoid this, you must include the greater context where it is non-obvious. In particular, every feature request that does not consist of adding support for a new site should contain a use case scenario that explains in what situation the missing feature would be useful.
56
57 ### Does the issue involve one problem, and one problem only?
58
59 Some of our users seem to think there is a limit of issues they can or should open. There is no limit of issues they can or should open. While it may seem appealing to be able to dump all your issues into one ticket, that means that someone who solves one of your issues cannot mark the issue as closed. Typically, reporting a bunch of issues leads to the ticket lingering since nobody wants to attack that behemoth, until someone mercifully splits the issue into multiple ones.
60
61 In particular, every site support request issue should only pertain to services at one site (generally under a common domain, but always using the same backend technology). Do not request support for vimeo user videos, Whitehouse podcasts, and Google Plus pages in the same issue. Also, make sure that you don't post bug reports alongside feature requests. As a rule of thumb, a feature request does not include outputs of youtube-dl that are not immediately related to the feature at hand. Do not post reports of a network error alongside the request for a new video service.
62
63 ### Is anyone going to need the feature?
64
65 Only post features that you (or an incapacitated friend you can personally talk to) require. Do not post features because they seem like a good idea. If they are really useful, they will be requested by someone who requires them.
66
67 ### Is your question about youtube-dl?
68
69 It may sound strange, but some bug reports we receive are completely unrelated to youtube-dl and relate to a different or even the reporter's own application. Please make sure that you are actually using youtube-dl. If you are using a UI for youtube-dl, report the bug to the maintainer of the actual application providing the UI. On the other hand, if your UI for youtube-dl fails in some way you believe is related to youtube-dl, by all means, go ahead and report the bug.
70
71 # DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
72
73 Most users do not need to build youtube-dl and can [download the builds](http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html) or get them from their distribution.
74
75 To run youtube-dl as a developer, you don't need to build anything either. Simply execute
76
77 python -m youtube_dl
78
79 To run the test, simply invoke your favorite test runner, or execute a test file directly; any of the following work:
80
81 python -m unittest discover
82 python test/test_download.py
83 nosetests
84
85 If you want to create a build of youtube-dl yourself, you'll need
86
87 * python
88 * make (both GNU make and BSD make are supported)
89 * pandoc
90 * zip
91 * nosetests
92
93 ### Adding support for a new site
94
95 If you want to add support for a new site, first of all **make sure** this site is **not dedicated to [copyright infringement](#can-you-add-support-for-this-anime-video-site-or-site-which-shows-current-movies-for-free)**. youtube-dl does **not support** such sites thus pull requests adding support for them **will be rejected**.
96
97 After you have ensured this site is distributing it's content legally, you can follow this quick list (assuming your service is called `yourextractor`):
98
99 1. [Fork this repository](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/fork)
100 2. Check out the source code with:
101
102 git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/youtube-dl.git
103
104 3. Start a new git branch with
105
106 cd youtube-dl
107 git checkout -b yourextractor
108
109 4. Start with this simple template and save it to `youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py`:
110
111 ```python
112 # coding: utf-8
113 from __future__ import unicode_literals
114
115 from .common import InfoExtractor
116
117
118 class YourExtractorIE(InfoExtractor):
119 _VALID_URL = r'https?://(?:www\.)?yourextractor\.com/watch/(?P<id>[0-9]+)'
120 _TEST = {
121 'url': 'http://yourextractor.com/watch/42',
122 'md5': 'TODO: md5 sum of the first 10241 bytes of the video file (use --test)',
123 'info_dict': {
124 'id': '42',
125 'ext': 'mp4',
126 'title': 'Video title goes here',
127 'thumbnail': 're:^https?://.*\.jpg$',
128 # TODO more properties, either as:
129 # * A value
130 # * MD5 checksum; start the string with md5:
131 # * A regular expression; start the string with re:
132 # * Any Python type (for example int or float)
133 }
134 }
135
136 def _real_extract(self, url):
137 video_id = self._match_id(url)
138 webpage = self._download_webpage(url, video_id)
139
140 # TODO more code goes here, for example ...
141 title = self._html_search_regex(r'<h1>(.+?)</h1>', webpage, 'title')
142
143 return {
144 'id': video_id,
145 'title': title,
146 'description': self._og_search_description(webpage),
147 'uploader': self._search_regex(r'<div[^>]+id="uploader"[^>]*>([^<]+)<', webpage, 'uploader', fatal=False),
148 # TODO more properties (see youtube_dl/extractor/common.py)
149 }
150 ```
151 5. Add an import in [`youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py`](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py).
152 6. Run `python test/test_download.py TestDownload.test_YourExtractor`. This *should fail* at first, but you can continually re-run it until you're done. If you decide to add more than one test, then rename ``_TEST`` to ``_TESTS`` and make it into a list of dictionaries. The tests will then be named `TestDownload.test_YourExtractor`, `TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_1`, `TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_2`, etc.
153 7. Have a look at [`youtube_dl/extractor/common.py`](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py) for possible helper methods and a [detailed description of what your extractor should and may return](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py#L74-L252). Add tests and code for as many as you want.
154 8. Make sure your code follows [youtube-dl coding conventions](#youtube-dl-coding-conventions) and check the code with [flake8](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/flake8). Also make sure your code works under all [Python](http://www.python.org/) versions claimed supported by youtube-dl, namely 2.6, 2.7, and 3.2+.
155 9. When the tests pass, [add](http://git-scm.com/docs/git-add) the new files and [commit](http://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit) them and [push](http://git-scm.com/docs/git-push) the result, like this:
156
157 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py
158 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
159 $ git commit -m '[yourextractor] Add new extractor'
160 $ git push origin yourextractor
161
162 10. Finally, [create a pull request](https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-pull-request). We'll then review and merge it.
163
164 In any case, thank you very much for your contributions!
165
166 ## youtube-dl coding conventions
167
168 This section introduces a guide lines for writing idiomatic, robust and future-proof extractor code.
169
170 Extractors are very fragile by nature since they depend on the layout of the source data provided by 3rd party media hoster out of your control and this layout tend to change. As an extractor implementer your task is not only to write code that will extract media links and metadata correctly but also to minimize code dependency on source's layout changes and even to make the code foresee potential future changes and be ready for that. This is important because it will allow extractor not to break on minor layout changes thus keeping old youtube-dl versions working. Even though this breakage issue is easily fixed by emitting a new version of youtube-dl with fix incorporated all the previous version become broken in all repositories and distros' packages that may not be so prompt in fetching the update from us. Needless to say some may never receive an update at all that is possible for non rolling release distros.
171
172 ### Mandatory and optional metafields
173
174 For extraction to work youtube-dl relies on metadata your extractor extracts and provides to youtube-dl expressed by [information dictionary](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py#L75-L257) or simply *info dict*. Only the following meta fields in *info dict* are considered mandatory for successful extraction process by youtube-dl:
175
176 - `id` (media identifier)
177 - `title` (media title)
178 - `url` (media download URL) or `formats`
179
180 In fact only the last option is technically mandatory (i.e. if you can't figure out the download location of the media the extraction does not make any sense). But by convention youtube-dl also treats `id` and `title` to be mandatory. Thus aforementioned metafields are the critical data the extraction does not make any sense without and if any of them fail to be extracted then extractor is considered completely broken.
181
182 [Any field](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py#L149-L257) apart from the aforementioned ones are considered **optional**. That means that extraction should be **tolerate** to situations when sources for these fields can potentially be unavailable (even if they are always available at the moment) and **future-proof** in order not to break the extraction of general purpose mandatory fields.
183
184 #### Example
185
186 Say you have some source dictionary `meta` that you've fetched as JSON with HTTP request and it has a key `summary`:
187
188 ```python
189 meta = self._download_json(url, video_id)
190 ```
191
192 Assume at this point `meta`'s layout is:
193
194 ```python
195 {
196 ...
197 "summary": "some fancy summary text",
198 ...
199 }
200 ```
201
202 Assume you want to extract `summary` and put into resulting info dict as `description`. Since `description` is optional metafield you should be ready that this key may be missing from the `meta` dict, so that you should extract it like:
203
204 ```python
205 description = meta.get('summary') # correct
206 ```
207
208 and not like:
209
210 ```python
211 description = meta['summary'] # incorrect
212 ```
213
214 The latter will break extraction process with `KeyError` if `summary` disappears from `meta` at some time later but with former approach extraction will just go ahead with `description` set to `None` that is perfectly fine (remember `None` is equivalent for absence of data).
215
216 Similarly, you should pass `fatal=False` when extracting optional data from a webpage with `_search_regex`, `_html_search_regex` or similar methods, for instance:
217
218 ```python
219 description = self._search_regex(
220 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
221 webpage, 'description', fatal=False)
222 ```
223
224 With `fatal` set to `False` if `_search_regex` fails to extract `description` it will emit a warning and continue extraction.
225
226 You can also pass `default=<some fallback value>`, for example:
227
228 ```python
229 description = self._search_regex(
230 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
231 webpage, 'description', default=None)
232 ```
233
234 On failure this code will silently continue the extraction with `description` set to `None`. That is useful for metafields that are known to may or may not be present.
235
236 ### Provide fallbacks
237
238 When extracting metadata try to provide several scenarios for that. For example if `title` is present in several places/sources try extracting from at least some of them. This would make it more future-proof in case some of the sources became unavailable.
239
240 #### Example
241
242 Say `meta` from previous example has a `title` and you are about to extract it. Since `title` is mandatory meta field you should end up with something like:
243
244 ```python
245 title = meta['title']
246 ```
247
248 If `title` disappeares from `meta` in future due to some changes on hoster's side the extraction would fail since `title` is mandatory. That's expected.
249
250 Assume that you have some another source you can extract `title` from, for example `og:title` HTML meta of a `webpage`. In this case you can provide a fallback scenario:
251
252 ```python
253 title = meta.get('title') or self._og_search_title(webpage)
254 ```
255
256 This code will try to extract from `meta` first and if it fails it will try extracting `og:title` from a `webpage`.
257
258 ### Make regular expressions flexible
259
260 When using regular expressions try to write them fuzzy and flexible.
261
262 #### Example
263
264 Say you need to extract `title` from the following HTML code:
265
266 ```html
267 <span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">some fancy title</span>
268 ```
269
270 The code for that task should look similar to:
271
272 ```python
273 title = self._search_regex(
274 r'<span[^>]+class="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)', webpage, 'title')
275 ```
276
277 Or even better:
278
279 ```python
280 title = self._search_regex(
281 r'<span[^>]+class=(["\'])title\1[^>]*>(?P<title>[^<]+)',
282 webpage, 'title', group='title')
283 ```
284
285 Note how you tolerate potential changes in `style` attribute's value or switch from using double quotes to single for `class` attribute:
286
287 The code definitely should not look like:
288
289 ```python
290 title = self._search_regex(
291 r'<span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">(.*?)</span>',
292 webpage, 'title', group='title')
293 ```
294
295 ### Use safe conversion functions
296
297 Wrap all extracted numeric data into safe functions from `utils`: `int_or_none`, `float_or_none`. Use them for string to number conversions as well.
298