Play Youtube video on remote VLC.

__main__.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""Play Youtube video on remote VLC.

Usage: play-youtube-video-on-remote-vlc <webpage-url>

Send media url to remote (desktop) VLC using (Lua) http interface
https://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_HTTP_requests/
"""
import base64
import os
import sys
try:
    from urllib.parse import quote
    from urllib.request import Request, urlopen
except ImportError:  # Python 2
    from urllib import quote
    from urllib2 import Request, urlopen

hostname, port = os.environ['VLC_HOST'], os.environ['VLC_PORT']
username, password = '', os.environ['VLC_PASS']

webpage_url = sys.argv[1]

# enqueue & play immediately
url = ('http://{hostname}:{port}/requests/status.xml'.format(**vars())
       + '?command=in_play&input=' + quote(webpage_url))
credentials = '{username}:{password}'.format(**vars()).encode()
headers = {'Authorization':  # send auth unconditionally
           b'Basic ' + base64.b64encode(credentials)}
urlopen(Request(url, headers=headers)).close()