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YouTube Comments for Laravel

A Laravel package to download YouTube comments without using API keys, utilizing yt-dlp as the backend for extraction.

Requirements

• PHP 8.3 or higher
• Laravel 10.x or higher
• yt-dlp installed and accessible via terminal

Installation

1. Install the package via Composer:

2. The package will be automatically discovered by Laravel.

3. Publish the configuration file:

4. Install yt-dlp (if not already installed):

5. Configure the package in config/youtube-comments.php if needed.

Usage

Using Artisan Commands

This package provides several Artisan commands to interact with YouTube comments and live chat.

Fetch Comments (All-in-one)

To fetch comments from a YouTube video in a single step (download and parse), use the following command:

Replace VIDEO_ID with the ID of the YouTube video. For example:

This will generate a file in the configured output directory named comments_VIDEO_ID.txt containing all the comments from the video.

Fetch Live Chat

To fetch live chat from a YouTube video that had a live stream, use:

This will generate a file in the configured output directory named livechat_VIDEO_ID.txt containing all the live chat messages from the video.

Fetch Both Comments and Live Chat

To fetch both comments and live chat in a single operation, use:

This will generate two files in the configured output directory:

• comments_VIDEO_ID.txt containing all the comments
• livechat_VIDEO_ID.txt containing all the live chat messages

If either comments or live chat are not available for the video, the command will still succeed but will display a warning message.

Download Comments Only

If you want to only download the comments and save them as a JSON file (useful for debugging), use:

This will generate a file in the configured output directory named comments_VIDEO_ID.json containing the raw JSON data.

Parse Comments Only

To parse previously downloaded comments from a JSON file, use:

This command expects a file named comments_VIDEO_ID.json to exist in the configured output directory.

Using the Facade

You can also use the provided facade to interact with the YouTube client directly in your code:

Output Format

The parsed comments are saved in a text file with the following format:

How It Works

1. The application uses yt-dlp to download the comments from the YouTube video
2. It processes the JSON data and formats the comments
3. The formatted comments are saved to a text file in the output directory

Configuration

The package configuration file is located at config/youtube-comments.php after publishing. It includes the following options:

You can customize these settings by editing the configuration file or by setting the corresponding environment variables in your .env file.

Testing

The package includes a comprehensive test suite built with PHPUnit. The tests cover the main functionality of the package, including:

• Service classes (YouTubeClient)
• Command classes (FetchCommentsCommand, DownloadCommentsCommand, ParseCommentsCommand)

Running Tests

If you want to run the tests for this package, you can clone the repository and run:

Troubleshooting

• Make sure yt-dlp is installed and accessible from the command line
• Some videos may have comments disabled, in which case no comments will be downloaded
• Future live events that haven't started yet don't have comments available
• If you encounter any issues, try updating yt-dlp to the latest version

• For video IDs that start with a hyphen (e.g., -6oKXN8D6BI), you need to use the -- separator to prevent the shell from interpreting the ID as a command option:

  Note: The package has special handling for video IDs that start with a hyphen to ensure they are processed correctly.

License

This package is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.