Split your YouTube playlist into many, using your predefined rules

Reasoning

Until now, I have been lazy, and I was saving all my favorite music videos under single playlist, no matter the genre. Now is the time to fix it. Because YouTube does not have any mechanism to distinct music genres, we have to do it ourselves by creating rules. So I created a little project written in Python to export the playlist items, split them into multiple lists, and import back up one by one.

Setup credentials

First, we create a new project at Google Cloud Console

Search for api and services to find APIs & Services

Now we need to enable YouTube Data API v3

Search for it, and click enable

Now navigate to APIs & Services, click on Create Credentials and OAuth Client ID

It should ask you to Configure Consent Screen, so click on that and select External for User Type, and click on Create

On next page fill out:

• App name: Split Playlist
• User support email: your account email

and

• Developer contact information email address: your account email

Press on Save And Continue

Now we need to add the following scope:

• https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.force-ssl

Let’s go further so press on Save And Continue

Under Test users add your account email

Again press on Save And Continue

Now we need to create OAuth client ID credential

• Application type: Web application
• Name: just leave default
• Authorized redirect URIs: add https://localhost

Click Create

In the popup window, download JSON, it will save it as ~/Downloads/client_secret_…-….apps.googleusercontent.com.json

This is now Done.

The Project Usage

Project is located on GitHub. Let’s look at it on how to use it.

Install

You can install this Python project the way you like it, but I prefer using virtual environment.

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mkdir ./split_playlist
cd ./split_playlist
python3 -m venv ./venv
./venv/bin/pip install git+https://github.com/matejc/split_playlist

This will install three commands:

• pl-token: to login using OAuth client credentials
• pl-split: will fetch playlist items and split them into many using our rules
• pl-insert: incremental upload of playlist items, one playlist at a time

But before we start, we need to create playlist splitting rules

Split rules

Let’s make our own split rules and save them into ./split_playlist/rules.json:

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{
  "rules": [
    {"name": "removed", "fields": [ "channel" ], "patterns": [ null ]},
    {"name": "music_metal", "fields": [ "title", "channel" ], "patterns": [ "Minniva", "Sabaton" ] },
    {"name": "music_metal", "fields": [ "description" ], "patterns": [ "napalm records" ]},
    {"name": "music_dance", "fields": [ "title" ], "patterns": [ ".*" ]}
  ]
}

Rules will be executed in following order:

1. Create JSON List file named data/removed.jsonl for where channel name is null, to filter out removed or privated playlist items
2. Create JSON List file named data/music_metal.jsonl for where title, channel include “Minniva” or “Sabaton” keywords
3. Append items to JSON List file named data/music_metal.jsonl for where description include “napalm records” keyword
4. Create JSON List file named data/music_dance.jsonl for everything else (for this example, I have only Metal and Dance)

Login

Supply the client secret file, downloaded from Google Cloud Console from one of previous steps.

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./venv/bin/pl-token -f ~/Downloads/client_secret_...-....apps.googleusercontent.com.json

It will ask you to open the offered URL in the browser and follow the procedure there, until it redirects you to the (non existant) localhost page, at that point copy whole URL back to the upper command.

On successful execution, token will be saved into $HOME/.pl-token file. Later commands will use it automatically.

Export and Split

To export and split the playlist run the command:

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./venv/bin/pl-split -p "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=..." -r ./rules.json -o ./data

Make sure you inspect the results before importing your new playlists. You can do that by opening the files (either CSV, or jsonl) named music_metal and music_dance, inside the ./data directory.

Note: since the daily quota of requests that you can make is limited, you can re-run the command offline like so (for example if you are not satisfied with rules, and you want to change them):

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./venv/bin/pl-split -p ./data/all.jsonl -r ./rules.json -o ./data

Import

To import one of your new playlists:

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./venv/bin/pl-insert -p "music_metal" -i ./data

This will take some time and you might run out of daily quota, if that happens, just re-run the same command each day until everything is uploaded.

Note:

• Command is incremental, so no need to worry if you run it multiple times

Conclusion

This was fun little project, I always enjoy making things like this, and sharing with you all, since if I had some trouble with something, I am probably not alone. So wish you good day and keep making new stuff!