Pafy – Getting Added Date for Each Item in Playlist

In this article we will see how we can get the added date of each item of playlist in pafy. Pafy is a python library to download YouTube content and retrieve metadata. Pafy object is the object which contains all the information about the given video. A playlist in YouTube is a list, or group, of videos that plays in order, one video after the other. Metadata is “data that provides information about other data”. Added date is the date when the owner of the playlist added the item in the playlist.

We can get the playlist from youtube in pafy with the help of get_playlist method, below is the command given to do this

 pafy.get_playlist(url)

The playlist url should exist on youtube as it get the information of those videos which are present on the youtube. YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform.

Steps to get the playlist ID
1. Import the pafy module
2. Get the playlist with the help of URL of playlist
3. Return play list work as dictionary so use ‘items’ as key with the return playlist
4. Store the result in variable and from the items select the single item
5. With the single item use ‘playlist_meta’ key with it
6. Use ‘added’ as keyword with the meta data and store the result and print it

Below is the implementation

# importing pafy
import pafy

# url of playlist
url = "https://www.youtube.com / playlist?list = PLqM7alHXFySGqCvcwfqqMrteqWukz9ZoE"

# getting playlist
playlist = pafy.get_playlist(url)

# getting playlist items
items = playlist["items"]

# selecting single item
item = items[1]

# getting pafy object
i_pafy = item['pafy']

# getting meta data
metadata = item['playlist_meta']

# getting added date
date = metadata['added']

# printing date
print(date)

Output :

06/01/2016

Another example

# importing pafy
import pafy

# url of playlist
url = "https://www.youtube.com / playlist?list = PLqM7alHXFySE71A2bQdYp37vYr0aReknt"

# getting playlist
playlist = pafy.get_playlist(url)

# getting playlist items
items = playlist["items"]

# selecting single item
item = items[2]

# getting meta data
metadata = item['playlist_meta']

# getting added date
date = metadata['added']

# printing date
print(date)

Output :

27/09/2017