The Youtube comment scraper seems to be down.

[Hypurl]

Getting error:
`runfile('C:/Users/Jeff/Downloads/untitled1.py', wdir='C:/Users/Jeff/Downloads')
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "C:\Users\Jeff\Downloads\untitled1.py", line 120, in
for count, comment in enumerate(get_comments(url)):

File "C:\Users\Jeff\Downloads\untitled1.py", line 50, in get_comments
data = json.loads(data_str)

File "C:\Users\Jeff\anaconda3\lib\json_init_.py", line 348, in loads
return _default_decoder.decode(s)

File "C:\Users\Jeff\anaconda3\lib\json\decoder.py", line 337, in decode
obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())

File "C:\Users\Jeff\anaconda3\lib\json\decoder.py", line 355, in raw_decode
raise JSONDecodeError("Expecting value", s, err.value) from None

JSONDecodeError: Expecting value`

[sarahelizabeth]

It's not working for me either. I'm getting the same JSONDecodeError/Traceback that you are.

[x4nth055]

I'm having the same issue too, while I'll try to fix the code, please refer to YouTube API tutorial instead (and that's what I'm currently using as well):

https://www.thepythoncode.com/article/using-youtube-api-in-python

Hope this helps!

[ajskateboarder]

I understand this is an old issue, but I have found a fix for those who are still expecting one.

YouTube now uses var ytInitialData instead of window["ytInitialData"] . You can change line 50, or any line close by that creates the data_str variable from this:

data_str = find_value(
    res.text, 'window["ytInitialData"] = ', num_sep_chars=0, separator="\n"
).rstrip(";")

to this:

data_str = find_value(
    res.text, 'var ytInitialData = ', num_sep_chars=0, separator="\n"
).rstrip(";").split(';</script>')[0]

This script scrapes less comments than it should, although I don't know if it was always like that or not.
Hope this helps!