YouTube Captions


A simple utility to fetch YouTube video captions programmatically. This library retrieves captions in plain text or structured format for specified video IDs.

Features

- Fetch captions for any YouTube video with available subtitles.
- Supports multiple languages.
- Returns captions in both structured and plain text formats.

Installation

You can install the package via npm:

``bash
npm install youtube-captions
`

Or using Yarn:

`bash
yarn add youtube-captions
`

Or with pnpm:

`bash
pnpm add youtube-captions
`

Usage

$3

You can import the getVideoCaptions function in your project as follows:

`javascript
import getVideoCaptions from 'youtube-captions';
// or for CommonJS
const getVideoCaptions = require('youtube-captions');
`

$3

To fetch captions for a specific video, call the function with the video ID and optional configuration:

`javascript
const videoId = 'jNQXAC9IVRw';
const captions = await getVideoCaptions(videoId, { lang: 'en' });

console.log(captions);
`

$3

The getVideoCaptions function accepts the following optional parameters:

- lang (string): Specify the language of the captions (e.g., 'en' for English).
- plainText (boolean): If set to true, the captions will be returned in plain text format.

$3

`javascript
const videoId = 'jNQXAC9IVRw';
const captions = await getVideoCaptions('jNQXAC9IVRw', { lang: 'en', plainText: true });

console.log(captions);
`

Error Handling

The getVideoCaptions function may throw errors for various reasons:

- Invalid Video ID: If the provided video ID is invalid.
- Captions Disabled: If captions are disabled for the video.
- No Captions Available: If there are no available captions for the video.
- Request Limit Exceeded: If YouTube is receiving too many requests from your IP.

$3

`javascript
try {
await getVideoCaptions('invalid_id');
} catch (error) {
console.error('Error fetching captions:', error.message);
}
`

Testing

This library includes tests using Vitest. To run the tests, execute:

`bash
npm test
``

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a pull request or open an issue to discuss improvements or bugs.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.