+Before we had the issue template, despite our extensive [bug reporting instructions](#bugs), about 80% of the issue reports we got were useless, for instance because people used ancient versions hundreds of releases old, because of simple syntactic errors (not in youtube-dl but in general shell usage), because the problem was already reported multiple times before, because people did not actually read an error message, even if it said "please install ffmpeg", because people did not mention the URL they were trying to download and many more simple, easy-to-avoid problems, many of whom were totally unrelated to youtube-dl.
+
+youtube-dl is an open-source project manned by too few volunteers, so we'd rather spend time fixing bugs where we are certain none of those simple problems apply, and where we can be reasonably confident to be able to reproduce the issue without asking the reporter repeatedly. As such, the output of `youtube-dl -v YOUR_URL_HERE` is really all that's required to file an issue. The issue template also guides you through some basic steps you can do, such as checking that your version of youtube-dl is current.
+
+# DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
+
+Most users do not need to build youtube-dl and can [download the builds](https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html) or get them from their distribution.
+
+To run youtube-dl as a developer, you don't need to build anything either. Simply execute
+
+ python -m youtube_dl
+
+To run the test, simply invoke your favorite test runner, or execute a test file directly; any of the following work:
+
+ python -m unittest discover
+ python test/test_download.py
+ nosetests
+
+See item 6 of [new extractor tutorial](#adding-support-for-a-new-site) for how to run extractor specific test cases.
+
+If you want to create a build of youtube-dl yourself, you'll need
+
+* python
+* make (only GNU make is supported)
+* pandoc
+* zip
+* nosetests
+
+### Adding support for a new site
+
+If you want to add support for a new site, first of all **make sure** this site is **not dedicated to [copyright infringement](README.md#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**.
+
+After you have ensured this site is distributing its content legally, you can follow this quick list (assuming your service is called `yourextractor`):
+
+1. [Fork this repository](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/fork)
+2. Check out the source code with:
+
+ git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/youtube-dl.git
+
+3. Start a new git branch with
+
+ cd youtube-dl
+ git checkout -b yourextractor
+
+4. Start with this simple template and save it to `youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py`:
+
+ ```python
+ # coding: utf-8
+ from __future__ import unicode_literals
+
+ from .common import InfoExtractor
+
+
+ class YourExtractorIE(InfoExtractor):
+ _VALID_URL = r'https?://(?:www\.)?yourextractor\.com/watch/(?P<id>[0-9]+)'
+ _TEST = {
+ 'url': 'https://yourextractor.com/watch/42',
+ 'md5': 'TODO: md5 sum of the first 10241 bytes of the video file (use --test)',
+ 'info_dict': {
+ 'id': '42',
+ 'ext': 'mp4',
+ 'title': 'Video title goes here',
+ 'thumbnail': r're:^https?://.*\.jpg$',
+ # TODO more properties, either as:
+ # * A value
+ # * MD5 checksum; start the string with md5:
+ # * A regular expression; start the string with re:
+ # * Any Python type (for example int or float)
+ }
+ }
+
+ def _real_extract(self, url):
+ video_id = self._match_id(url)
+ webpage = self._download_webpage(url, video_id)
+
+ # TODO more code goes here, for example ...
+ title = self._html_search_regex(r'<h1>(.+?)</h1>', webpage, 'title')
+
+ return {
+ 'id': video_id,
+ 'title': title,
+ 'description': self._og_search_description(webpage),
+ 'uploader': self._search_regex(r'<div[^>]+id="uploader"[^>]*>([^<]+)<', webpage, 'uploader', fatal=False),
+ # TODO more properties (see youtube_dl/extractor/common.py)
+ }
+ ```
+5. Add an import in [`youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py`](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py).
+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. Note that tests with `only_matching` key in test's dict are not counted in.
+7. Have a look at [`youtube_dl/extractor/common.py`](https://github.com/ytdl-org/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/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/7f41a598b3fba1bcab2817de64a08941200aa3c8/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py#L94-L303). Add tests and code for as many as you want.
+8. Make sure your code follows [youtube-dl coding conventions](#youtube-dl-coding-conventions) and check the code with [flake8](https://flake8.pycqa.org/en/latest/index.html#quickstart):
+
+ $ flake8 youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
+
+9. Make sure your code works under all [Python](https://www.python.org/) versions claimed supported by youtube-dl, namely 2.6, 2.7, and 3.2+.
+10. When the tests pass, [add](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-add) the new files and [commit](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit) them and [push](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-push) the result, like this:
+
+ $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py
+ $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
+ $ git commit -m '[yourextractor] Add new extractor'
+ $ git push origin yourextractor
+
+11. Finally, [create a pull request](https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-pull-request). We'll then review and merge it.
+
+In any case, thank you very much for your contributions!
+
+## youtube-dl coding conventions
+
+This section introduces a guide lines for writing idiomatic, robust and future-proof extractor code.
+
+Extractors are very fragile by nature since they depend on the layout of the source data provided by 3rd party media hosters out of your control and this layout tends 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 dependency on the source's layout and even to make the code foresee potential future changes and be ready for that. This is important because it will allow the 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 a fix incorporated, all the previous versions become broken in all repositories and distros' packages that may not be so prompt in fetching the update from us. Needless to say, some non rolling release distros may never receive an update at all.
+
+### Mandatory and optional metafields
+
+For extraction to work youtube-dl relies on metadata your extractor extracts and provides to youtube-dl expressed by an [information dictionary](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/7f41a598b3fba1bcab2817de64a08941200aa3c8/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py#L94-L303) or simply *info dict*. Only the following meta fields in the *info dict* are considered mandatory for a successful extraction process by youtube-dl:
+
+ - `id` (media identifier)
+ - `title` (media title)
+ - `url` (media download URL) or `formats`
+
+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` as mandatory. Thus the aforementioned metafields are the critical data that the extraction does not make any sense without and if any of them fail to be extracted then the extractor is considered completely broken.
+
+[Any field](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/7f41a598b3fba1bcab2817de64a08941200aa3c8/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py#L188-L303) apart from the aforementioned ones are considered **optional**. That means that extraction should be **tolerant** 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.
+
+#### Example
+
+Say you have some source dictionary `meta` that you've fetched as JSON with HTTP request and it has a key `summary`:
+
+```python
+meta = self._download_json(url, video_id)
+```
+
+Assume at this point `meta`'s layout is:
+
+```python
+{
+ ...
+ "summary": "some fancy summary text",
+ ...
+}
+```
+
+Assume you want to extract `summary` and put it into the resulting info dict as `description`. Since `description` is an optional meta field you should be ready that this key may be missing from the `meta` dict, so that you should extract it like:
+
+```python
+description = meta.get('summary') # correct
+```
+
+and not like:
+
+```python
+description = meta['summary'] # incorrect
+```
+
+The latter will break extraction process with `KeyError` if `summary` disappears from `meta` at some later time but with the former approach extraction will just go ahead with `description` set to `None` which is perfectly fine (remember `None` is equivalent to the absence of data).
+
+Similarly, you should pass `fatal=False` when extracting optional data from a webpage with `_search_regex`, `_html_search_regex` or similar methods, for instance:
+
+```python
+description = self._search_regex(
+ r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
+ webpage, 'description', fatal=False)
+```
+
+With `fatal` set to `False` if `_search_regex` fails to extract `description` it will emit a warning and continue extraction.
+
+You can also pass `default=<some fallback value>`, for example:
+
+```python
+description = self._search_regex(
+ r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
+ webpage, 'description', default=None)
+```
+
+On failure this code will silently continue the extraction with `description` set to `None`. That is useful for metafields that may or may not be present.
+
+### Provide fallbacks
+
+When extracting metadata try to do so from multiple sources. For example if `title` is present in several places, try extracting from at least some of them. This makes it more future-proof in case some of the sources become unavailable.
+
+#### Example
+
+Say `meta` from the previous example has a `title` and you are about to extract it. Since `title` is a mandatory meta field you should end up with something like:
+
+```python
+title = meta['title']
+```
+
+If `title` disappears from `meta` in future due to some changes on the hoster's side the extraction would fail since `title` is mandatory. That's expected.
+
+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:
+
+```python
+title = meta.get('title') or self._og_search_title(webpage)
+```
+
+This code will try to extract from `meta` first and if it fails it will try extracting `og:title` from a `webpage`.
+
+### Regular expressions
+
+#### Don't capture groups you don't use
+
+Capturing group must be an indication that it's used somewhere in the code. Any group that is not used must be non capturing.
+
+##### Example
+
+Don't capture id attribute name here since you can't use it for anything anyway.
+
+Correct:
+
+```python
+r'(?:id|ID)=(?P<id>\d+)'
+```
+
+Incorrect:
+```python
+r'(id|ID)=(?P<id>\d+)'
+```
+
+
+#### Make regular expressions relaxed and flexible
+
+When using regular expressions try to write them fuzzy, relaxed and flexible, skipping insignificant parts that are more likely to change, allowing both single and double quotes for quoted values and so on.
+
+##### Example
+
+Say you need to extract `title` from the following HTML code:
+
+```html
+<span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">some fancy title</span>
+```
+
+The code for that task should look similar to:
+
+```python
+title = self._search_regex(
+ r'<span[^>]+class="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)', webpage, 'title')
+```
+
+Or even better:
+
+```python
+title = self._search_regex(
+ r'<span[^>]+class=(["\'])title\1[^>]*>(?P<title>[^<]+)',
+ webpage, 'title', group='title')
+```
+
+Note how you tolerate potential changes in the `style` attribute's value or switch from using double quotes to single for `class` attribute:
+
+The code definitely should not look like:
+
+```python
+title = self._search_regex(
+ r'<span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">(.*?)</span>',
+ webpage, 'title', group='title')
+```
+
+### Long lines policy
+
+There is a soft limit to keep lines of code under 80 characters long. This means it should be respected if possible and if it does not make readability and code maintenance worse.
+
+For example, you should **never** split long string literals like URLs or some other often copied entities over multiple lines to fit this limit:
+
+Correct:
+
+```python
+'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqZTN594JQw&list=PLMYEtVRpaqY00V9W81Cwmzp6N6vZqfUKD4'
+```
+
+Incorrect:
+
+```python
+'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqZTN594JQw&list='
+'PLMYEtVRpaqY00V9W81Cwmzp6N6vZqfUKD4'
+```
+
+### Inline values
+
+Extracting variables is acceptable for reducing code duplication and improving readability of complex expressions. However, you should avoid extracting variables used only once and moving them to opposite parts of the extractor file, which makes reading the linear flow difficult.
+
+#### Example
+
+Correct:
+
+```python
+title = self._html_search_regex(r'<title>([^<]+)</title>', webpage, 'title')
+```
+
+Incorrect:
+
+```python
+TITLE_RE = r'<title>([^<]+)</title>'
+# ...some lines of code...
+title = self._html_search_regex(TITLE_RE, webpage, 'title')
+```
+
+### Collapse fallbacks
+
+Multiple fallback values can quickly become unwieldy. Collapse multiple fallback values into a single expression via a list of patterns.
+
+#### Example
+
+Good:
+
+```python
+description = self._html_search_meta(
+ ['og:description', 'description', 'twitter:description'],
+ webpage, 'description', default=None)
+```
+
+Unwieldy:
+
+```python
+description = (
+ self._og_search_description(webpage, default=None)
+ or self._html_search_meta('description', webpage, default=None)
+ or self._html_search_meta('twitter:description', webpage, default=None))
+```
+
+Methods supporting list of patterns are: `_search_regex`, `_html_search_regex`, `_og_search_property`, `_html_search_meta`.
+
+### Trailing parentheses
+
+Always move trailing parentheses after the last argument.
+
+#### Example
+
+Correct:
+
+```python
+ lambda x: x['ResultSet']['Result'][0]['VideoUrlSet']['VideoUrl'],
+ list)
+```
+
+Incorrect:
+
+```python
+ lambda x: x['ResultSet']['Result'][0]['VideoUrlSet']['VideoUrl'],
+ list,
+)
+```
+
+### Use convenience conversion and parsing functions
+
+Wrap all extracted numeric data into safe functions from [`youtube_dl/utils.py`](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/utils.py): `int_or_none`, `float_or_none`. Use them for string to number conversions as well.
+
+Use `url_or_none` for safe URL processing.
+
+Use `try_get` for safe metadata extraction from parsed JSON.
+
+Use `unified_strdate` for uniform `upload_date` or any `YYYYMMDD` meta field extraction, `unified_timestamp` for uniform `timestamp` extraction, `parse_filesize` for `filesize` extraction, `parse_count` for count meta fields extraction, `parse_resolution`, `parse_duration` for `duration` extraction, `parse_age_limit` for `age_limit` extraction.
+
+Explore [`youtube_dl/utils.py`](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/utils.py) for more useful convenience functions.
+
+#### More examples
+
+##### Safely extract optional description from parsed JSON
+```python
+description = try_get(response, lambda x: x['result']['video'][0]['summary'], compat_str)
+```
+
+##### Safely extract more optional metadata
+```python
+video = try_get(response, lambda x: x['result']['video'][0], dict) or {}
+description = video.get('summary')
+duration = float_or_none(video.get('durationMs'), scale=1000)
+view_count = int_or_none(video.get('views'))
+```
+
+# EMBEDDING YOUTUBE-DL
+
+youtube-dl makes the best effort to be a good command-line program, and thus should be callable from any programming language. If you encounter any problems parsing its output, feel free to [create a report](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/new).
+
+From a Python program, you can embed youtube-dl in a more powerful fashion, like this:
+
+```python
+from __future__ import unicode_literals
+import youtube_dl
+
+ydl_opts = {}
+with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
+ ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
+```
+
+Most likely, you'll want to use various options. For a list of options available, have a look at [`youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py`](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/3e4cedf9e8cd3157df2457df7274d0c842421945/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py#L137-L312). For a start, if you want to intercept youtube-dl's output, set a `logger` object.
+
+Here's a more complete example of a program that outputs only errors (and a short message after the download is finished), and downloads/converts the video to an mp3 file:
+
+```python
+from __future__ import unicode_literals
+import youtube_dl
+
+
+class MyLogger(object):
+ def debug(self, msg):
+ pass
+
+ def warning(self, msg):
+ pass
+
+ def error(self, msg):
+ print(msg)
+
+
+def my_hook(d):
+ if d['status'] == 'finished':
+ print('Done downloading, now converting ...')
+
+
+ydl_opts = {
+ 'format': 'bestaudio/best',
+ 'postprocessors': [{
+ 'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
+ 'preferredcodec': 'mp3',
+ 'preferredquality': '192',
+ }],
+ 'logger': MyLogger(),
+ 'progress_hooks': [my_hook],
+}
+with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
+ ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
+```