WWW::YouTube

Raku package for getting metadata and transcripts of YouTube videos.

The Raku implementation closely follows the Wolfram Language function YouTubeTranscript, [AAf1].

Installation

From Zef ecosystem:

zef install WWW::YouTube

From GitHub:

zef install https://github.com/antononcube/Raku-WWW-YouTube.git

Usage

youtube-metadata($id)

• Get the metadata of the YouTube video with identifier $id.

youtube-playlist($id)

• Get the video identifiers of the YouTube playlist with identifier $id.

youtube-transcript($id)

• Get the transcript of the YouTube video with identifier $id.

Details

• All three subs, youtube-metadata, youtube-playlist, and youtube-transript, work with strings that are identifiers or (full) URLs.

• youtube-metdata extracts the metadata associated with a YouTube video identifier.

  • Returns a record (hashmap) with keys <channel-title description publish-date title view-count>.

• youtube-playlist extracts the video identifiers of a given YouTube playlist identifier.

  • Currently, gives only the first 100 videos.

• youtube-transcript extracts the captions of the video, if they exist.

  • The transcript can be returned as plain text, array of hashmaps, JSON string.

  • The YouTube Data API has usage quotas.

  • Not all YouTube videos have automatic or manual captions. If no captions are available, the function returns a message indicating this.

• youtube-transcript processes "captionTracks" of the YouTube Data API, which is a field of YouTube's video metadata.

  • The field "captionTracks" is an array of objects, where each object represents a single caption track (e.g., for a specific language or type).

  • From "captionTracks" the "baseURL" string is extracted, which is the URL to fetch the caption content.

• youtube-transcript has an option :$method which specifies should the transcript be retrieved using either:

  • Delegation to youtube_transcript_api CLI provided by the Python package "youtube-transcript-api", [JDp1]

    • When :$method can be given the values "python", "cli", "python-cli".

  • Raku's "HTTP::UserAgent"

    • When :$method is given the values "raku", "http", "raku-http".

Examples

Metadata

Get the metadata associated with a YouTube video identifier:

use WWW::YouTube;
use Data::Translators;

youtube-metadata('S_3e7liz4KM') 
==> to-html(align => 'left')

Transcripts

my $transcript = youtube-transcript('ewU83vHwN8Y');

say $transcript.chars;

say $transcript.substr(^300);

Summarize using a Large Language Model (LLM):

use LLM::Functions;
use LLM::Prompts;

llm-synthesize(llm-prompt('Summarize')($transcript), e => 'ChatGPT')

Get the transcript as a dataset:

my @t = youtube-transcript('S_3e7liz4KM', format => 'dataset');

@t.head(10) ==> to-html(field-names => <time duration content>, align => 'left')

Playlists

youtube-playlist('PLke9UbqjOSOiMnn8kNg6pb3TFWDsqjNTN')

CLI

The package provides Command Line Interface (CLI) scripts. Here are their usage messages:

youtube-metadata --help

youtube-playlist --help

youtube-transcript --help

TODO

• TODO Implementation

  • DONE Get transcript for a video identifier

  • DONE Video metadata retrieval

  • TODO Video identifiers for a playlist

    • DONE For playlists with ≤ 100 videos

    • TODO Large playlists

  • Delegation to the Python package "youtube-transcript-api"

  • TODO Different transcript output formats (for the Raku-HTTP method)

    • DONE Text

    • DONE Dataset (array of hashmap records)

    • DONE JSON

    • TODO WebVTT

    • TODO SRT

  • Implement versions of the subs using a YouTube API key

• TODO Documentation

  • DONE Basic usage

  • TODO Transcripts retrieval for a playlist

References

[AAf1] Anton Antonov, YouTubeTranscript, (2025), Wolfram Function Repository.

[JDp1] Jonas Depoix, youtube-transcript-api Python package, (2018-2025), GitHub/jdepoix. (At PyPI.org.)