Node.js Youtube-DL Express Example to Extract Youtube Video Meta Info (Title,Description) in JS

Welcome folks today in this blog post we will be using the youtube-dl library to extract youtube video information such as title and description in browser using javascript. All the full source code of the application is shown below.

Get Started

In order to get started you need to initialize a new node.js project using the below command as shown below

npm init -y

npm i express

Now we need to make the index.js file and copy paste the following code

index.js

const express = require('express');
 
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');
    
const {exec} = require('child_process');
 
const app = express();
 
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }))
 
app.use(bodyParser.json())
 
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
    res.sendFile(__dirname + "/index.html")
})
 
app.listen(5000, () => {
    console.log('listening on port 5000')
})

const express = require('express');

const bodyParser = require('body-parser');

const {exec} = require('child_process');

const app = express();

app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }))

app.use(bodyParser.json())

app.get('/', (req, res) => {

res.sendFile(__dirname + "/index.html")

})

app.listen(5000, () => {

console.log('listening on port 5000')

})

As you can see we are importing the express library and then we are applying the bodyparser middleware and then we are loading the index.html file when user goes to the / home route.

index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Advanced Youtube Video Thumbnail Downloader in Node.js & Express</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.4.1/css/bootstrap.min.css">
</head>
<body>
    <div class="container">
        <h1 class="text-center">
            Extract Information About Youtube Video
        </h1>
        <form action="/fetchdata" method="post">
            <div class="form-group">
                <input type="text" class="form-control" name="url" placeholder="Enter Youtube Video URL" required id="">
            </div>
            <div class="form-group">
                <button class="btn btn-danger btn-block">
                    Extract Information
                </button>
            </div>
        </form>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

<!DOCTYPE html>

<head>

<title>Advanced Youtube Video Thumbnail Downloader in Node.js & Express</title>

</head>

<body>

Extract Information About Youtube Video

</h1>

</div>

Extract Information

</button>

</div>

</form>

</div>

</body>

</html>

As you can see we are importing the bootstrap library cdn and then we have the simple html5 form where we allow the user to enter the youtube video url and then we have the button to extract the video information. Here we are making the post request to the /fetchinfo route. Now we need to define this route inside the index.js file as shown below

index.js

app.post('/fetchdata', (req, res) => {
    var url = req.body.url
 
    exec(`youtube-dl --skip-download --write-info-json ${url}`, (err, stdout, stderr) => {
        if (err) {
            console.log(err)
        }
        else {
            console.log(stdout)
        }
    })
 
})

app.post('/fetchdata', (req, res) => {

var url = req.body.url

exec(`youtube-dl --skip-download --write-info-json ${url}`, (err, stdout, stderr) => {

if (err) {

console.log(err)

}

else {

console.log(stdout)

}

})

As you can see we are getting the url of the youtube video and then we are executing the command using the exec() method and inside that we are using the youtube-dl library to extract the information about the video and save it in json file.