Exporting

The exporting feature allows you to save fetched data in multiple formats for analysis, reporting, or integration with other tools. ytfetcher supports three widely-used export formats to suit different use cases and preferences.

Use the exporter classes to export ChannelData or any other supported fetch result in csv, json, or txt. Results from fetch_youtube_data(), fetch_with_comments(), fetch_transcripts(), fetch_snippets(), and fetch_comments() are normalized internally before writing.

from ytfetcher.services import JSONExporter # OR you can import other exporters: TXTExporter, CSVExporter

channel_data = fetcher.fetch_youtube_data()

exporter = JSONExporter(
    channel_data=channel_data,
    allowed_metadata_list=['title'],
    timing=True,
    filename='my_export',
    output_dir='./exports'
)

exporter.write()

Exporter Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
channel_data	ChannelData	The channel data object to export (required)
allowed_metadata_list	list[str]	List of metadata fields to include in the export. Common fields: title, description, duration, upload_date, etc.
timing	bool	Whether to include transcript timing information (start time and duration for each segment)
filename	str	Base filename for the exported file (without extension)
output_dir	str	Directory path where the exported file will be saved. Defaults to current directory if not specified

Example with Different Metadata

# Export with more metadata fields
exporter = CSVExporter(
    channel_data=channel_data,
    allowed_metadata_list=['title', 'duration', 'upload_date', 'view_count'],
    timing=False,
    filename='channel_analysis',
    output_dir='./data/exports'
)

exporter.write()

Custom Exporters (Advanced)

If you need to support a format not provided by ytfetcher (like XML), you can extend the BaseExporter class. You only need to implement the write() method.

from ytfetcher.services import BaseExporter

class XMLExporter(BaseExporter):
    def write(self):
        output_path = self._initialize_output_path(export_type='xml')
        # Your custom logic to convert self.channel_data to XML
        print(f"Exporting data to {output_path}")