Newpipe: Unable to import really long YouTube subscription list

Created on 17 Mar 2019 · 7Comments · Source: TeamNewPipe/NewPipe

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Here is the roughly 90KB file I'm trying to import. I simply get the message "Could not import subscriptions." When I remove a large chunk of the list at random from the middle of the file, reducing it to about 40KB, I can get it to import. I'm not sure if it's related to the size of the list or if there happens to be a single entry in it breaking things. I'm happy to provide any other information I can to help track down the issue.

This is when running version 0.16.1 from fdroid on Android 9.0

Thanks!

bug youtube

Source

mlow

👍2

Most helpful comment

I found where the bug lies: in the NewPipeExtractor repo. The problem is that the youtube extractor explicitely throws an exception when the title is empty. See lines 66-68 at YoutubeSubscriptionExtractor.java.

I opened a pull request: TeamNewPipe/NewPipeExtractor#160

Stypox on 26 Apr 2019

🎉2

All 7 comments

Same problem here. I had to build 20 lists from the original "subscription_manager" file to import my YouTube subscription list. Running version 0.16.1 from F-Droid on Android 7.1.2 .

manoelnascimento on 18 Apr 2019

Encountered the same problem here too. Running on the 0.16.1 on Android 9

DuelToDeath on 21 Apr 2019

I bisected my subscription_manager file until I found the culprit: It’s a deleted/suspended channel with empty title and text tags, that YouTube still includes in the exported list but NewPipe apparently can’t handle.

To reproduce one can try this minimal example:

<opml version="1.1"><body><outline text="YouTube Subscriptions" title="YouTube Subscriptions"><outline text="" title="" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCxCmitIuHqjM_Gl72cu_ylA" /></body></opml>

Obvious workaround: Manually delete the problematic entry.

buckket on 23 Apr 2019

👍1

I bisected my subscription_manager file until I found the culprit: It’s a deleted/suspended channel with empty title and text tags, that YouTube still includes in the exported list but NewPipe apparently can’t handle.

To reproduce one can try this minimal example:
<opml version="1.1"><body><outline text="YouTube Subscriptions" title="YouTube Subscriptions"><outline text="" title="" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCxCmitIuHqjM_Gl72cu_ylA" /></body></opml>
Obvious workaround: Manually delete the problematic entry.

Thank you soooooooooooooo much!!!! That's really helpful

Delta2333 on 25 Apr 2019

I opened a pull request: TeamNewPipe/NewPipeExtractor#160

Stypox on 26 Apr 2019

🎉2

Spot on, @buckket and @Stypox!

It's a little unexpected that YouTube put that in the export (because the title is empty, it "knew" it wasn't available when exporting), but looking at my subscriptions list I can find some channels that were removed as well, but they still show their names, maybe because YouTube don't delete subscriptions because a channel can be reinstated after a suspension (still, a bug in YouTube side).

But it's a problematic check nonetheless, it should only see if the url exists, because that's what matters.

PS: I don't think size matters (maybe in _very_ memory contraint devices?), here it is importing a 6MB file: