Modified VLC YouTube playlist parsing script. The original script was not working anymore because youtube removed the list_ajax interface. Unfortunately the new interface requires at least http GET method with proper headers and they are not supported by vlc. So this version makes use of an external program (youtube-dl). Disclaimer: this version…

149909-playlist_youtube.lua

--[[
 Youtube playlist importer for VLC media player 1.1 and 2.0
 Copyright 2012 Guillaume Le Maout

 Authors:  Guillaume Le Maout
 Contact: http://addons.videolan.org/messages/?action=newmessage&username=exebetche

 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
 (at your option) any later version.

 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 GNU General Public License for more details.

 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
 Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston MA 02110-1301, USA.
--]]

--[[
 MODified by Kai Gillmann, 19.01.2013, [email protected]:
 VLC HAS already a youtube importer, but not for playlists. IMO this mentioned one is
 better than this one, because it opens the video in the best possible video resolution.
 So i decided to remove all parts of the code which is not responsible for list handling.
 Now this lua script parses the list, as wanted, but for each video opened, the vlc default
 Youtube script is used, so the videos will be displayed properly.
--]]

--[[
 Youtube playlist importer for VLC media player 1.1 and 2.0
 Copyright 2012 Guillaume Le Maout

 Authors:  Guillaume Le Maout
 Contact: http://addons.videolan.org/messages/?action=newmessage&username=exebetche

 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
 (at your option) any later version.

 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 GNU General Public License for more details.

 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
 Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston MA 02110-1301, USA.
--]]

--[[
 MODified by Kai Gillmann, 19.01.2013, [email protected]:
 VLC HAS already a youtube importer, but not for playlists. IMO this mentioned one is
 better than this one, because it opens the video in the best possible video resolution.
 So i decided to remove all parts of the code which is not responsible for list handling.
 Now this lua script parses the list, as wanted, but for each video opened, the vlc default
 Youtube script is used, so the videos will be displayed properly.
--]]

--[[
 Patched by Aaron Hill (https://github.com/seraku24), 2018-05-16:
 The original script was failing in VLC 3.x due to an overzealous probe function.
 This patch makes the probe function more restrictive to avoid false positives.
--]]

--[[
 Patched by Matteo Federico Zazzetta (https://github.com/p3g4asus), 2020-02-17:
 The original script was not working anymore because youtube removed the list_ajax interface.
 Unfortunately the new interface requires at least http GET method with proper headers and 
 they are not supported by vlc. So this version makes use of an external program (youtube-dl).
 Disclaimer: this version works only under Windows. It can be easily ported but I have no way to test
 it on other OS at the moment.
 Installation (under Windows): place this file in the lua playlist vlc folder together with JSON.lua 
 (http://regex.info/code/JSON.lua) and youtube-dl.exe (https://youtube-dl.org/latest)
--]]

-- Probe function.
function probe()
     if vlc.access ~= "http" and vlc.access ~= "https" then
         return false
     end

     return string.match(vlc.path:match("([^/]+)"),"%w+.youtube.com") and (
             not string.match(vlc.path, "list_ajax") and string.match(vlc.path, "[?&]list="))
end

local function isdef(p,...)
    if not p then
        return false
    else
        local tb = p
        for i,v in ipairs(arg) do
            if tb[v]==nil then
                return false
            else
                tb = tb[v]
            end
        end
        return true
    end
end

function Log(lm)
    vlc.msg.info("[youtube_pl.lua] " .. tostring(lm))
end

function get_url_param( url, name )
    local _, _, res = string.find( url, "[&?]"..name.."=([^&]*)" )
    return res
end

function try_yt_dl(lst)
    local info = debug.getinfo(1,'S');
    local kk,jj,ll = string.match(string.sub(info.source,2), "(.-)([^\\/]-%.?([^%.\\/]*))$")
    Log("Trying ytdl "..kk)
    local link = vlc.access.."://www.youtube.com/playlist?list="..lst
    local JSON = (loadfile (kk.."JSON.lua"))()
    local bat_dir3 = "cmd /k \"\""..kk.."youtube-dl.exe\" -j --flat-playlist \""..link.."\"\""
    local f = assert(io.popen (bat_dir3, 'r'))
    local p = {}
    Log("Exec "..bat_dir3)
    -- local bat_dir2 = "> \""..kk.."youtube-dl.txt\" \""..kk.."youtube-dl.exe\" -j --flat-playlist \""..link.."\""
    -- Log("Exec "..bat_dir2)
    -- os.execute(bat_dir2)
    -- local outfile = kk.."youtube-dl.txt"
    -- Log("Open "..outfile)
    local p = {}
    for json in f:lines() do 
        Log(json)
        local rv, pall = pcall(function () return JSON:decode(json) end)
        if rv and isdef(pall,"id") then
            local item = {}
            item.path = "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v="..pall.id
            if isdef(pall,"title") then
                item.title = pall.title
            end
            if isdef(pall,"duration") then
                item.duration = math.floor(tonumber(pall.duration))
            end
            table.insert (p, item)
        end
    end
    f:close()
    return p
end

-- Parse function.
function parse()
    if string.match( vlc.path, "list=" ) then
        local lst = get_url_param(vlc.path, "list")
        return try_yt_dl(lst)
    end
end

It does not work for me.
Here are the logs:

lua warning: error running script C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\lua\playlist\149909-playlist_youtube.lua: function parse(): ...ideoLAN\VLC\lua\playlist\149909-playlist_youtube.lua:120: attempt to call a nil value

Did you copy JSON.lua in the same directory of the script lua file?

It does not work for me, every video name is replaced with get_video_info and then it disappears from the view

It does not work for me, every video name is replaced with get_video_info and then it disappears from the view

That is a problem with youtube vlc extension.
Today youtube modified something in get_video_info interface and now even youtube vlc playlist extension does not work anymore.
I hope the wil fix it soon (if it can be fixed). In the meanwhile the only workaround is to use ytdl lua

omg, will youtube stop modifying all their stuff i can't play youtube video longer than 10 min anymore ! that's so annoying !

I have updated VLC and it is better now, but most videos can't play from any music/copyright channels.

I have updated VLC and it is better now, but most videos can't play from any music/copyright channels.

Yep you're right but man... That's what I've been using vlc for smh

I have updated VLC and it is better now, but most videos can't play from any music/copyright channels.

Yeah my FlagPlayer broke as well on some videos, YouTube slightly changed formats for parts of their stream encoding. But that's not likely the issue you were having with youtube-dl, my older version works just fine on some of these videos.
Basically youtube checks if the IP that requested the webpage is the same as the one requesting the stream, for some copyrighted videos, which might be what you're experiencing - although I don't know why youtube-dl would be using a proxy, so not sure if that is actually the problem.
Can you share a link that currently does not work with youtube-dl?

I installed the youtube-dl lua and then it is worse and 0 videos can play

Hi, I worked on a version that use the code source of the playlist to extract the data (I use the ytInitialData from javascript to get the data), it works with /watch?v=XXX&list=XXXX and /playlist?list=XXXX urls and I want to add support of music.youtube.com/watch?list=XXX and music.youtube.com/playlist?list=XXX.

WARNING: if Youtube update there code, my parser will not work any more and will need an update.

https://gist.github.com/Daniel-Mendes/21cff1d94b584769fa05a4905bd272b5

I installed the youtube-dl lua and then it is worse and 0 videos can play

The YTDL LUA overrides this script. REMOVE IT.

I installed the youtube-dl lua and then it is worse and 0 videos can play

The YTDL LUA overrides this script. REMOVE IT.
Yes you said it right...but will it work without yt dl....while until then I am using this edition Made By @Daniel-Mendes
LINK TO FILE: https://gist.github.com/Daniel-Mendes/21cff1d94b584769fa05a4905bd272b5
NOTE::-- IT ONLY WORKS UPTO 100 videos in a playlist...sometimes it will discard the playlist after reading if the playlist if it has 100+ videos

Hey! I have used this extension before, by some Miracle I figured out how to get it to work. I did something recently, don't know what, I can't remember how to get the Extension to work, it took me hours last time and I am not a Code Genius.

Could someone make a step by step for absolutely brain dead people like me and others? We'd really appreciate it, a short video would be great!

Edit: Okay, I figured it out, Mostly. So, I reinstalled VLC, fully wiped all it's data. Went into AppData and Roaming, made the Lua and Extensions and Playlist folder. Putting it all in Playlist there, it Works, except it Doesn't.

So, it won't play 90% of the Songs, I guess it's a region Restriction thing, I'm from Australia though and normal browsing I have no Restrictions on the Songs that aren't playing Normally.

How do I go about making VLC play these 'Restricted' Songs?

Not sure tbh but you could try if other custom software has similar issues with it. E.g. I made FlagPlayer and there are certain copyrighted videos it can't play if it is using a public proxy server (default, though you can easily host one locally). VLC should not have a problem with that due to not being a website, I would expect it to play back all videos. So if you find FlagPlayer can play them, I would file a bug with VLC (or the maintainer of the YouTube watch plugin, not this one). If it can't, it should give you some idea to why (you could even send me a link if it's not clear why and I'll test).
https://flagplayer.seneral.dev/ (Comments are broken again and there's a weird video length bug only on firefox but apart from that videos should play fine).
One thing I will say is that YouTube sometimes just doesn't load a video, both through FlagPlayer or the official website, until you reload. Not sure if YouTube detects foreign traffic by other programs and adds unreliability after some time, but got nothing to compare with to verify.

Thanks! it solved an issue to me (no idea why or how) regarding error http 403 of mi AHK script to extract/insert URLsof playlist to VLC YouPlayTubeList

For those unable to play most videos (403 HTTP error), i have updated the youtube.lua script to use youtube-dl to get the link. Updated script