Youtube.com + cookies: 'unicode' object has no attribute 'items'

Checklist

• I’m reporting a broken site support issue
• I’ve verified that I’m running youtube-dl version 2021.04.01
• I’ve checked that all provided URLs are alive and playable in a browser
• I’ve checked that all URLs and arguments with special characters are properly quoted or escaped
• I’ve searched the bugtracker for similar bug reports including closed ones
• I’ve read bugs section in FAQ

Verbose log

$ youtube-dl -v --cookies=/tmp/ytdljar.txt https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=vP3rYUNmrgU
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'--cookies=/tmp/ytdljar.txt', u'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP3rYUNmrgU']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs UTF-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2021.04.01
[debug] Python version 2.7.13 (CPython) - Linux-4.15.18-10-pve-x86_64-with-debian-9.13
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 3.3.9, ffprobe 3.3.9
[debug] Proxy map: {}
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 174, in _run_module_as_main
    "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 72, in _run_code
    exec code in run_globals
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/__main__.py", line 19, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 475, in main
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 465, in _real_main
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 2060, in download
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 799, in extract_info
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 806, in wrapper
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 827, in __extract_info
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 533, in extract
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 437, in initialize
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py", line 268, in _real_initialize
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py", line 253, in _initialize_consent
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 2902, in _get_cookies
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/Cookie.py", line 583, in __init__
    if input: self.load(input)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/Cookie.py", line 643, in load
    for k, v in rawdata.items():
AttributeError: 'unicode' object has no attribute 'items'

Description

Since as of two days ago, 31 March 2021, youtube.com stopped working when using cookies and youtube-dl version 2021.04.01 I tested the --username/--password parameters and indeed I can login and download videos.

So, I pulled the youtube-dl version 2021.03.31 and it was able to download videos using cookies. So something between 8f493de9fb3a7f123bdf887163efa06ce9d6b051 and ca304beb1538e54c5a18fdd50846ed2259d63b8c messed up the way cookies are being processed.

[rautamiekka]

I can’t speak for non-Debian-type Linux distros, but there you can install the python-is-python3 package.

^ However, the problem’s that if anything uses Python 2-exclusive scripts, they’ll break. I know Ubuntu’s latest versions are using Python 3-exclusive scripts and Python 2 was relocated to multiverse repo (which is disabled by default IIRC), so Ubuntu is safe.

Alternatively you can make a shell alias like so:

##If in ${PATH}:
alias youtube-dl='python3 youtube-dl '

##If not in ${PATH}:
alias youtube-dl='python3 /path/to/youtube-dl '

Notice the trailing space !

[Suika]

Nice knowing all that, but the docs list support for python 2.6/2.7. Sadly it is still a bug that needs fixing, as it breaks that version “support”. But at least I know that it works with py3.