itslab-kyushu/youtube-comment-scraper

---
title: YouTube comment scraper
type: homepage
date: 2017-02-11
lastmod: 2017-03-14
description: Scraping comments from Youtube.
---
[![MIT License](http://img.shields.io/badge/license-MIT-blue.svg?style=flat)](https://github.com/itslab-kyushu/youtube-comment-scraper/blob/master/LICENSE)
[![npm version](https://badge.fury.io/js/youtube-comment-scraper.svg)](https://badge.fury.io/js/youtube-comment-scraper)
[![Code Climate](https://codeclimate.com/github/itslab-kyushu/youtube-comment-scraper/badges/gpa.svg)](https://codeclimate.com/github/itslab-kyushu/youtube-comment-scraper)
[![Japanese](https://img.shields.io/badge/qiita-%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E-brightgreen.svg)](http://qiita.com/jkawamoto/items/97d88f27c7d13df8dbf5)

Scraping comments from Youtube.

## Installation
To install `youtube-comment-scraper` in your global environment,
```shell
$ npm install -g youtube-comment-scraper
```
after that, you can use `scraper` command.


## Usage
~~~shell
Usage: scraper url [options]

  url
    URL for a Youtube video page or video ID.

  --help, -h
    Displays help information about this script

  --version
    Displays version info
~~~

Output is a JSON format text.
Its schema looks like

```json
{
  "id": "the video ID.",
  "channel":{
    "id": "ID of the channel the video belongs to.",
    "name" : "the channel name."
  },
  "comments": [
    {
      "root": "root (parent) comment body.",
      "author": "author of the root comment.",
      "author_id": "ID of the author",
      "like": "like score (summation of +1 for like and -1 for dislike).",
      "children": [
        {
          "comment": "reply comment.",
          "author": "author of the reply comment.",
          "author_id": "author ID",
          "like": "like score."
        },
        ...
      ]
    },
    ...
  ]
}
```


## Method

```js
var scraper = require("youtube-comment-scraper");
```

### `scraper.comments(url)`
Scraping a given Youtube page and return a set of comments.

- Args:
  - url: URL of the target page or video ID.
- Returns:
 Promise object. Use "then" to receive results.

### `scraper.channel(url)`
Scraping a Youtube channel page and return a description of the channel.

- Args:
  - id: channel ID.
- Returns:
  Promise object. Use "then" method to receive results.

### `scraper.close()`
Cleanup this module. After all scrapings have done, this method should be called.
Otherwise, some instances of PhantomJS will keep running and it prevents
finishing main process.

### example
```js
scraper.comments(some_url).then(function(res) {
  // Printing the result.
  console.log(JSON.stringify({
    url: some_url,
    comments: res
  }));

  // Close scraper.
  scraper.close();
});
```

## For developers

### Build
Run the following two command.

```shell
$ npm install
$ npm run build
```

### Run

```shell
$ ./bin/cli.js <url>
```

`<url>` is a Youtube url.

## License

This software is released under the MIT License, see
[LICENSE](https://github.com/itslab-kyushu/youtube-comment-scraper/blob/master/LICENSE).