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site iconDavid Walsh

Senior Software Engineer. MooTools Alumni, Javascript Fanatic, and open source lover. Former @Mozilla , @SitePen
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How to Download a YouTube Video or Channel

2024-09-04 12:42:36

The ability to download media on the internet almost feels like a lost art. When I was in my teens, piracy of mp3s, movies, and just about everything else via torrents and apps like Kazaa, LimeWire, Napster, etc. was in full swing. These days sites use blob URLs and other means to prevent downloads. Luckily we have tools like yt-dlp to download individual YouTube videos or entire channels of content.

To download an entire channel, you can use yt-dlp:

yt-dlp https://www.youtube.com/@beetlejuicearchives3490

If you’re like me and only care for the audio, you can use a few more arguments:

yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 https://www.youtube.com/@beetlejuicearchives3490

youtube-dl used to be the standard for downloading YouTube videos but yt-dlp seems to have taken the throne. YouTube has such a wealth of information on just about anything, be sure to download content for travel, long walks, or any other reason!

The post How to Download a YouTube Video or Channel appeared first on David Walsh Blog.

How to Add a Header to a curl Request

2024-08-04 00:51:46

curl is one of those great utilities that’s been around seemingly forever and has endless use cases. These days I find myself using curl to batch download files and test APIs. Sometimes my testing leads me to using different HTTP headers in my requests.

To add a header to a curl request, use the -H flag:

curl -X 'GET' \
 'https://nft.api.cx.metamask.io/collections?chainId=1' \
 -H 'accept: application/json' \
 -H 'Version: 1'

You can add multiple headers with multiple -H uses. Header format is usually [key]: [value].

The post How to Add a Header to a curl Request appeared first on David Walsh Blog.

Case Insensitive CSS Attribute Selector

2024-06-19 19:31:27

CSS selectors never cease to amaze me in how powerful they can be in matching complex patterns. Most of that flexibility is in parent/child/sibling relationships, very seldomly in value matching. Consider my surprise when I learned that CSS allows matching attribute values regardless off case!

Adding a {space}i to the attribute selector brackets will make the attribute value search case insensitive:

/* case sensitive, only matches "example" */
[class=example] {
  background: pink;
}

/* case insensitive, matches "example", "eXampLe", etc. */
[class=example i] {
  background: lightblue;
}

The use cases for this i flag are likely very limited, especially if this flag is knew knowledge for you and you’re used to a standard lower-case standard. A loose CSS classname standard will have and would continue to lead to problems, so use this case insensitivity flag sparingly!

The post Case Insensitive CSS Attribute Selector appeared first on David Walsh Blog.

How to Set Date Time from Mac Command Line

2024-06-17 20:01:38

Working on a web extension that ships to an app store and isn’t immediately modifiable, like a website, can be difficult. Since you cannot immediately deploy updates, you sometimes need to bake in hardcoded date-based logic. Testing future dates can be difficult if you don’t know how to quickly change the date on your local machine.

To change the current date on your Mac, execute the following from command line:

# Date Format:  MMDDYYYY
sudo date -I 06142024

This command does not modify time, only the current date. Using the same command to reset to current date is easy as well!

The post How to Set Date Time from Mac Command Line appeared first on David Walsh Blog.

How to Retrieve WiFi Password on Windows

2024-05-13 18:45:29

Remembering the WiFi password when on a guest network is never easy. Even worse is when it’s no longer posted and someone else is asking you for it. Luckily there’s a built in Windows command to recover the password of a given WiFi network.

The Shell Code

Open cmd and execute the following command:

netsh wlan show profile name="David Walsh's Network" key=clear

The result of the command, assuming the network is found, is a long text output with a variety of information about the network. To get the see the password for the network, look under the “Security settings” heading which will look like this:

Security settings
-----------------
    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal
    Cipher                 : CCMP
    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal
    Cipher                 : GCMP
    Security key           : Present
    Key Content            : **THE_PLAIN_TEXT_PASSWORD**

As with any complicated command line format, it’s best to create an alias so that you don’t need to remember the full string!

The post How to Retrieve WiFi Password on Windows appeared first on David Walsh Blog.