A script to search for youtube videos (and playlists) in the command line, displaying their url/video id. Works great with youtube-dl.

searchTube.py

#!/usr/bin/env python2
# ^ also compatible with python3 ^

# This script executes a search request for the specified search term and prints the results.
# Sample usage:
#   python searchTube.py --max-results=10 "megadeth album"
# uses the google api client module for python so make sure you install it

import argparse
from googleapiclient.discovery import build

DEVELOPER_KEY = "EXAMPLE_KEY" # REQUIRES your own API key here, get the key from google developers.
YOUTUBE_API_SERVICE_NAME = 'youtube'
YOUTUBE_API_VERSION = 'v3'

def youtube_search(options):
  youtube = build(YOUTUBE_API_SERVICE_NAME, YOUTUBE_API_VERSION,
    developerKey=DEVELOPER_KEY)

  # Call the search.list method to retrieve results matching the specified query term:
  search_response = youtube.search().list(
    q=options.title,
    part='id,snippet',
    maxResults=options.max_results
  ).execute()

  videos = []
  videoIDs = []
  videoTimes = []
  playlists = []
  playlistIDs = []

  # Add each result to the appropriate list:
  for search_result in search_response.get('items', []):
    if search_result['id']['kind'] == 'youtube#video':
      videos.append(search_result['snippet']['title'])
      videoIDs.append(search_result['id']['videoId'])
    elif search_result['id']['kind'] == 'youtube#playlist':
      playlists.append(search_result['snippet']['title'])
      playlistIDs.append(search_result['id']['playlistId'])
  if videos:
      requestingID = ""
      for ID in videoIDs:
          requestingID += ID+","
      search_response2 = youtube.videos().list(
          part="contentDetails",
          id=requestingID
          ).execute()
      for result in search_response2.get('items', []):
          contentDetail = result['contentDetails']
          videoTimes.append(contentDetail["duration"])
  # displays the videos with their duration
  print("Videos: http://youtube.com/watch?v=[ID]\n")
  for i in range(len(videos)):
      out = videos[i] + " | "
      time = videoTimes[i]
      displayTime = ""
      for j in range(2, len(time)):
          if time[j].isdigit():
              displayTime += time[j]
          else:
              displayTime += time[j] + " "
      out += displayTime + " | "
      out += videoIDs[i]
      print(out)
  # displays the playlists
  print("\nPlaylists: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=[ID]\n")
  for i in range(len(playlists)):
      out = playlists[i]
      out += " | " + playlistIDs[i]
      print(out)

if __name__ == '__main__':
  parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
  parser.add_argument('title', help='Title to search for') # required
  parser.add_argument('--max-results', help='Maximum number of results to display', default=10)
  args = parser.parse_args()

  youtube_search(args)