How I prepared episode 2493: YouTube Subscriptions - update

Introduction

In show 2493 I listed a number of the YouTube channels I watch. Some of what I did to prepare the notes was to cut and paste information from YouTube pages, but the basic list itself was generated programmatically. I thought the process I used might be of interest to somebody so I am describing it here.

Components

I needed four components to achieve what I wanted:

YouTube subscription list (only available in OPML format as far as I know)

The xmlstarlet tool to parse the OPML

Template Toolkit which I used to generate Markdown

The pandoc document converter tool to generate HTML

I will talk a little about the first three components in this episode in order to provide an overview.

Full-length notes

The full-length notes (available here) contain details of the processes involved in building the list of channels.

Links

YouTube Subscription Manager page

The xmlstarlet manual (HTML, single page)

Template Toolkit

Template::Plugin::Datafile

Template Toolkit replace virtual method

The pandoc document converter

Previous HPR shows referred to:

hpr2202 :: Makers on YouTube

hpr2493 :: YouTube Subscriptions - update

Resources:

Detailed notes

Example template file: yt_template.tpl