YouTube app favorites - how to extract them from your iOS backups if iOS 6 replaces the YouTube app

gistfile1.sh

# visit your iOS backups folder
cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup/

# go to the most recent backup sub-folder
cd `ls -t1 | head -1`

# find the YouTube bookmarks file
grep -r "BookmarksMergeOffered" .

    > ./fa2a1edd7d2789794b49856a1ad60f6ff002f1e0:  <key>BookmarksMergeOffered</key>

# Copy that file to a new file named "youtube.bookmarks.plist.xml", and put it in a temporary folder.

cp fa2a1edd7d2789794b49856a1ad60f6ff002f1e0 ~/Desktop/tmp/youtube.bookmarks.plist.xml
cd ~/Desktop/tmp

# Grab all the ids (including recent history, which means some duplicates, sorry)    
cat youtube.bookmarks.plist.xml | ruby -ne 'puts $1 if /<string>(.{11})<\/string>/' > youtube.bookmarks.ids.txt

# Use YouTube's oEmbed API to grab the data for each id
# (not 100% foolproof – I ran into 404's and 401's, but I had some old bookmarks...)
cat youtube.bookmarks.ids.txt | ruby -ne 'puts "http://www.youtube.com/oembed?url=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch?v%3D#{$_.chomp}&format=json"' > youtube.bookmarks.oembeds.txt
cat youtube.bookmarks.oembeds.txt | xargs curl -w "\n%{url_effective}\n\n" > youtube.bookmarks.json

# parse out the HTML for every single video and put it into one giant HTML file (warning, this could be really difficult for your browser to load!)
cat youtube.bookmarks.json | ruby -rjson -ne 'puts JSON.parse($_)["html"] rescue puts "<p>#{$_}</p>\n\n"' > index.html

# alternately, to get a bunch of thumbnails + oEmbed links:
cat youtube.bookmarks.json | ruby -rjson -ne 'puts "<img src=" + JSON.parse($_)["thumbnail_url"] + "><br>" rescue puts "<a href=#{$_}>#{$_}</a><br/>"' > index.html