gotta get down on Friday, scraping view counts from youtube

#selenium #python

It is Friday. And you have to get down on Friday.

How many views does RB's video Friday have on Youtube right now?

You can do this with Selenium.

_{disclaimer this is clearly just for fun, some sites frown on being scraped... :)}



ytlink="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfVsfOSbJY0"

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

import time
driver = None

try:
    cpath = "e:\\projects\\headless\\chromedriver.exe"
    driver = webdriver.Chrome(cpath)
    driver.get(ytlink)
    # how do we fix this next statement?
    time.sleep(5)
    cs_selector = "#count > yt-view-count-renderer > span.view-count.style-scope.yt-view-count-renderer"
    e = driver.find_element(By.CSS_SELECTOR,cs_selector)
    time.sleep(3)
    txt_views = print(e.text)


finally:
    if driver is not None:
        driver.quit()