README.md

yt2pod is a daemon that monitors YouTube channels and publishes audio podcasts of them.

A podcast episode needn't be created for every video uploaded to a channel. They can be filtered based on title and upload date.

A single instance of yt2pod can monitor multiple YouTube channels simultaneously and publish a separate audio podcast based on each (and even multiple podcasts based on the same channel).

A built-in webserver serves the following for each podcast:

• RSS Feed:
  • http://YOURDOMAIN.COM/meta/SHORT_NAME.xml
• Artwork:
  • http://YOURDOMAIN.COM/meta/SHORT_NAME.jpg
• Audio Episodes:
  • http://YOURDOMAIN.COM/ep/id_of_source_youtube_video.EXT
  • ...
  • ...

The capitalised parts are specified in your config file.

Configuration

Configuration is specified in a JSON file. Here is an example config file.

Each podcast is configured as an element of the "podcasts" array. In each:

• yt_channel is either the YouTube channel's Username or its ID (a 24-character string starting "UC"). Note that on modern YouTube, not every channel has a Username. Go to the channel's page using your web browser and look at the URL and you will find either one or the other.

• epoch is a date ("YYYY-MM-DD" or an empty string to mean the beginning of time). Videos uploaded before the epoch are ignored.

• title_filter is a regular expression. Videos with a title matching it have a podcast episode created for them. Use an empty string if you want them all.

• name is the name of the podcast to be shown to the user in their podcast client.

• description is the description of the podcast to be shown to the user in their podcast client. If this is omitted or is the empty string, a matter-of-fact description will be generated.

• custom_image is a filesystem path (relative to the data directory - see the -data flag) for a custom image to use for the podcast's artwork. If this is omitted or is the empty string, the avatar image of the YouTube user this podcast is based on will be used.

• short_name is a unique name that will be used for things like the podcast feed's file name and logging. For example, for podcast with a name of "This Week In Bikeshedding", use a short_name like "twib".

Command-line Flags

In addition to the config file, there are a handful of command-line flags:

usage:
  yt2pod [flags]

flags:
  -config string
      path to config file (default "config.json")
  -data string
      path to directory to change into and write data (created if needed) (default "data")
  -dataclean
      during initialisation, remove files in the data directory that are irrelevant given the current config
  -syslog
      send log statements to syslog rather than writing them to stderr
  -version
      show version information then exit

YouTube Data API

YouTube's Data API is used to query information. The example config file contains an API key that you can use, or you can get your own API key and use it instead.

Building, and an external dependency

With the Go toolchain installed, the following shell command will download the source code and build it:

go get github.com/frou/yt2pod

The yt2pod binary should now be built and located in $GOPATH/bin

? The yt2pod binary calls out to the youtube-dl command at runtime. You should make sure you have youtube-dl installed (it is available in all good package managers).

Autostart with systemd daemon

If you have a distro that uses systemd (like Ubuntu), you can make yt2pod work as a daemon.

First, create a systemd service file by running: sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/yt2pod.service

Use the following template:

Description=Podcast Daemon
After=network.target

[Service]
User=yt2pod
Group=yt2pod

Type=simple
ExecStart=/opt/yt2pod/yt2pod -syslog -config /home/yt2pod/config.json -data /home/yt2pod/data
TimeoutStopSec=20

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Make sure to change the location of the yt2pod binary, the location of the config.json and the data folder to were yours are, they must be set manually in the file otherwise the service will fail to start!

Start the service: sudo systemctl start yt2pod.service

Check for errors: sudo systemctl status yt2pod.service In case you get any errors, make sure to see your systemlog for more info about it.

If no errors, enable the service to autostart with your computer: sudo systemctl enable yt2pod.service

License

The MIT License

Copyright (c) 2015 Duncan Holm

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.