Youku Scraper

What does Youku Scraper do?

Youku Scraper is an Apify Actor designed to extract detailed information about videos from the Youku platform. It can scrape video details using direct video URLs, profile URLs, or search terms, allowing users to gather comprehensive data on a wide range of videos available on Youku.

✨ Features

• 🔎 Scrape by search terms, profiles and video URLs
• ⚡ Fast and reliable scraping
• 🧑‍💻 Perfect for non-technical users
• 🔒 No need for authentication
• 🔄 Automatically handles retries for failed requests
• 📦 Outputs data in JSON format for easy integration with other tools

🎯 Who Is This For?

• Content creators and marketers looking to analyze Youku video content
• Researchers studying trends and patterns in online video content
• Developers needing structured data from Youku for their applications
• Anyone interested in gathering insights from Youku's vast video library

⬇️ Input Options

• 📊 detailLevel (optional) - The level of detail to scrape for each video. basic includes only a few key details (title, URL, thumbnail, etc.), while detailed includes all available details (including play info, tags, and more). Default is detailed.
• 🔗 startUrls - List of URLs to scrape. It can be a list of video URLs, profile URLs or search URLs from Youku. or
• 🔍 searchTerms - Search terms to query on Youku. The Actor will search for each term and scrape results until it reaches the maxItems limit.
• 🔃 searchSortBy (optional) - Sorting order for search results. general sorts by relevance, most_recent sorts by publish date with newest first, and most_viewed sorts by popularity with most viewed first.
• ⏱️ searchDurationFilter (optional) - Filter search results by video duration. Options: all, up_to_10_minutes, 10_to_30_minutes, 30_to_60_minutes, over_60_minutes.
• 🗓️ searchPublishTimeFilter (optional) - Filter search results by publish time. Options: all, last_day, last_week, last_two_weeks, last_month.
• 🎥 searchQualityFilter (optional) - Filter search results by video quality. Options: all, hd, full_hd, blu-ray.
• ⚙️ maxItems (optional) - Maximum number of items to scrape per profile URL or search term. Set 0 to scrape all available items. Default is 0.

💡 Input Examples

🔗 Scrape by URLs

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjQ0NTczMTY5Mg==.html"
  ]
}

🔍 Scrape by Search Terms

{
  "searchTerms": [
    "小猪佩奇"
  ],
  "searchSortBy": "most_recent",
  "searchDurationFilter": "up_to_10_minutes",
  "searchPublishTimeFilter": "last_week",
  "searchQualityFilter": "hd",
  "maxItems": 50
}

👤 Scrape a profile by URL

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://i.youku.com/u/UMjE1NTM3OTk0OA=="
  ],
  "maxItems": 20
}

📹 Scrape by Video IDs

{
  "videoIds": [
    "XNjQ0NTczMTY5Mg==",
    "XNTg5MzIxMTA3Ng=="
  ]
}

🧩 Scrape by Profile IDs

{
  "profileIds": [
    "UMTMzMjIxOTkwODA=",
    "UMjE1NTM3OTk0OA=="
  ]
}

📤 Output Format

The scraper returns different output shapes depending on the video type.

Common fields (all types)

• url: URL of the video on Youku
• videoId: Unique identifier for the video
• title: Title of the video
• type: Type of video — ugc_video or show_episode
• categoryId: Unique identifier for the video's category
• categoryName: Name of the video's category
• duration: Duration of the video in milliseconds
• thumbnailUrl: URL of the video's thumbnail image
• verticalThumbnailUrl: URL of the video's vertical thumbnail image
• totalUpCount: Number of upvotes the video has received
• commentCount: Number of comments the video has received
• publishTime: Publish time of the video
• description: Description of the video
• isPaid: Whether the video requires a paid subscription

UGC Video additional fields

• uploader.id: Unique identifier for the uploader
• uploader.name: Display name of the uploader
• uploader.avatarUrl: URL of the uploader's avatar image
• uploader.followerCount: Number of followers the uploader has

Show Episode additional fields

• showId: Unique identifier for the show
• showName: Name of the show
• showSubtitle: Subtitle of the show
• showCategory: Category of the show
• showCategoryId: Unique identifier for the show's category
• showThumbnailUrl: URL of the show's thumbnail image
• showVerticalThumbnailUrl: URL of the show's vertical thumbnail image
• showReleaseTime: Release time of the show
• totalEpisodeCount: Total number of episodes in the show

🗂️ Output Examples

Show Episode Output Example

{
  "type": "show_episode",
  "url": "https://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjMxNjc2Njk2NA==.html",
  "longId": 1579191741,
  "videoId": "XNjMxNjc2Njk2NA==",
  "title": "搞笑外国人：冷热终极对决挑战赛，冰与火的碰撞，谁能获胜呢？",
  "categoryId": 177,
  "duration": 201830,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://m.ykimg.com/05410101659E7AA62C400712EBE239AA",
  "verticalThumbnailUrl": "https://m.ykimg.com/05750101659E7AA62C400712EBE239AA",
  "categoryName": "少儿",
  "totalUpCount": 49,
  "commentCount": 0,
  "publishTime": "2024-01-10 19:10:18",
  "uploader": {},
  "description": "每天更新优质的搞笑外国人视频",
  "showId": "adbe8ef7391d4728a9a3",
  "showCategory": "少儿",
  "showCategoryId": 177,
  "totalEpisodeCount": 3000,
  "showName": "趣味老外剧场",
  "showSubtitle": "搞笑外国人展现生活百态",
  "showThumbnailUrl": "http://m.ykimg.com/050C0000659E909E13EB66127DA3888B",
  "showVerticalThumbnailUrl": "http://m.ykimg.com/050E00005729A660000000195504CDFC",
  "showReleaseTime": "0000-00-00",
  "isPaid": false
}

UGC Video Output Example

{
  "type": "ugc_video",
  "url": "https://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjQ3MDU1Njk0NA==.html",
  "longId": 1617639236,
  "videoId": "XNjQ3MDU1Njk0NA==",
  "title": "创意玩具，帮助小粉完成吃喝拉撒睡",
  "categoryId": 177,
  "duration": 480850,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://m.ykimg.com/0541010168175F3F662C2815183DA0E8",
  "verticalThumbnailUrl": "https://m.ykimg.com/0575010168175F4035D6C91A7EC52AC7",
  "categoryName": "少儿",
  "totalUpCount": 25241,
  "commentCount": 467,
  "publishTime": "2025-05-04 20:38:01",
  "uploader": {
    "id": "UMTQyOTQwMDcxODA=",
    "name": "童真玩具园",
    "avatarUrl": "https://ykimg.alicdn.com/develop/image/2023-08-04/2c50d70b0f150ed754ab101aa2ebdfd6.png",
    "followerCount": 40000
  },
  "description": null,
  "showId": null,
  "showCategory": null,
  "showCategoryId": null,
  "totalEpisodeCount": null,
  "showName": null,
  "showSubtitle": null,
  "showThumbnailUrl": null,
  "showVerticalThumbnailUrl": null,
  "showReleaseTime": null,
  "isPaid": false
}

Basic Output Example

When detailLevel is set to basic, the output contains only a few key fields:

{
  "url": "https://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTg5MzIxMTA3Ng==.html",
  "title": "国外小女孩和哥哥的热与冷挑战，你觉得谁更厉害一些呢",
  "videoId": "XNTg5MzIxMTA3Ng==",
  "type": "ugc_video",
  "uploader": {
    "id": "UMTMzMjIxOTkwODA=",
    "name": "糖果甜甜吖",
    "avatarUrl": "https://ykimg.alicdn.com/develop/image/2023-03-29/401aa2b57d779c15f96ad4d9cdc56525.png"
  },
  "duration": 229000,
  "publishTime": "4年前",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://vthumb.ykimg.com/0541010162F06DF5052D3F9A68B9B4AB"
}

💲 How much will scraping Youku cost you?

The pricing changes according to your Apify plan.

Plan	Basic Result Level	Detailed Result Level
Free	$8/1000 videos	$15/1000 videos
Starter	$5/1000 videos	$9/1000 videos
Scale	$4/1000 videos	$7/1000 videos
Business	$3/1000 videos	$6/1000 videos

🧩 Integrations and Youku Scraper

Youku Scraper can be connected with almost any cloud service or web app thanks to integrations on the Apify platform. You can integrate with Make, Zapier, Slack, Airbyte, GitHub, Google Sheets, Google Drive, and more. Or you can use webhooks to carry out an action whenever an event occurs, e.g. get a notification whenever Youku Scraper successfully finishes a run.

🔌 Using Youku Scraper with the Apify API

The Apify API gives you programmatic access to the Apify platform. The API is organized around RESTful HTTP endpoints that enable you to manage, schedule, and run Apify actors. The API also lets you access any datasets, monitor actor performance, fetch results, create and update versions, and more.

To access the API using Node.js, use the apify-client NPM package. To access the API using Python, use the apify-client PyPI package.

Check out the Apify API reference docs for full details or click on the API tab for code examples.

💬 Giving feedback

We're always working on improving the performance of our Actors. So if you've got any technical feedback for Youku Scraper or simply found a bug, please create an issue on the Actor's Issues tab in Apify Console. 📧 Email: nathan.santos159@hotmail.com