[BUG] Argparse interprets video IDs starting with - as options in CLI; propose quoted string workaround or better solution

[vabe44]

CLI: Video IDs starting with - are interpreted as options, causing errors

Description

When using the from_video_ids command, if any video ID starts with a dash (-), argparse interprets it as an option/flag, resulting in an error like:

ytfetcher: error: unrecognized arguments: -WwShcgXz08 ...

Current workaround

A possible workaround is to pass the video IDs as a single quoted string with the -v option, for example:

ytfetcher from_video_ids ... -v "OjooPjtlSr0 ... -WwShcgXz08 ..."

and then split the string in the code.

and then split the string in the code.

Proposal

Update the CLI to accept a single quoted string for video IDs and split it internally, so users can include IDs starting with - without special handling.

I have implemented this quoted string change locally and can create a pull request if this solution is acceptable.

Open question

Is this the best solution, or is there a more argparse-native way to allow a list of values (some starting with -) without requiring quoting or --? Feedback and alternative suggestions are welcome!

[kaya70875]

Hi @vabe44, great catch. I made some research about how we can solve this more efficiently and I think the best solution is yours.

We can implement this solution but here's the thing:

I checked a bit and realized Youtube video id's mostly doesn't start with -. So including this feature can be overkill for most of the users since they have to wrap the video id's with "" even for video id's that doesn't start with -.

So maybe we can find a solution that if provided video id list includes video id's that starts with -, users need to wrap their video id's with "" and if not they can just write normally.

We can add this to readme docs and also mention help parameter in the argparse itself. For eg:

parser_playlist_id.add_argument("-v", "--video-ids", nargs="+", help='Video id list to fetch. Wrap your video ids with double quotes if any video id starts with - sign')

What do you think ? I want to hear your opinions too.