soimort/you-get · error · Exception

Cannot find flashvars

Error message

Cannot find flashvars

What it means

Raised as plain Exception in ICousesExactor.get_flashvars (src/you_get/extractors/icourses.py:209). The video page must contain a 'var flashvars = {...};' JS block that supplies IService, uuid, other and the player version needed to build API URLs; if the regex finds no such block, extraction cannot proceed.

Source

Thrown at src/you_get/extractors/icourses.py:209

        return

    def get_title(self):
        if 'viewVCourse' in self.url:
            self.title = public_course_get_title(self.url, self.page)
            return
        title_a_patt = r'<div class="con"> <a.*?>(.*?)</a>'
        title_b_patt = r'<div class="con"> <a.*?/a>((.|\n)*?)</div>'
        title_a = match1(self.page, title_a_patt).strip()
        title_b = match1(self.page, title_b_patt).strip()
        title = title_a + title_b
        title = re.sub('( +|\n|\t|\r|&nbsp;)', '', unescape_html(title).replace(' ', ''))
        self.title = title

    def get_flashvars(self):
        patt = r'var flashvars\s*=\s*(\{(?:.|\n)+?\});'
        hit = re.search(patt, self.page)
        if hit is None:
            raise Exception('Cannot find flashvars')
        flashvar_str = hit.group(1)

        uuid = re.search(r'uuid\s*:\s*\"?(\w+)\"?', flashvar_str).group(1)
        other = re.search(r'other\s*:\s*"(.*?)"', flashvar_str).group(1)
        isvc = re.search(r'IService\s*:\s*\'(.+?)\'', flashvar_str).group(1)

        player_time_patt = r'MPlayer.swf\?v\=(\d+)'
        player_time = re.search(player_time_patt, self.page).group(1)

        self.flashvars = dict(IService=isvc, uuid=uuid, other=other, v=player_time)

    def api_req(self, url):
        xml_str = get_content(url)
        dom = parseString(xml_str)
        status = dom.getElementsByTagName('result')[0].getAttribute('status')
        if status != 'success':
            raise Exception('API returned fail')

View on GitHub (pinned to 049548f3f3)

Solutions

  1. Fetch the page manually (curl with the same fake_headers) and verify the flashvars block exists in the served HTML.
  2. If the block is gone or reformatted, update the regex and the downstream uuid/IService/other extraction in get_flashvars for the new template.
  3. Ensure the URL is an actual video resource page (changeforVideo.action / showResDetail.action), not a course listing.
Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

import re

def page_has_flashvars(html):
    return re.search(r'var flashvars\s*=\s*(\{(?:.|\n)+?\});', html) is not None

Try / catch

try:
    icourses_download(url, output_dir)
except Exception as e:
    if str(e) == 'Cannot find flashvars':
        # likely bot-wall or redesign: fetch page manually and inspect
        log_page_for_triage(url)
    else:
        raise

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: basic_extract() runs get_flashvars() on a page whose HTML lacks r'var flashvars\s*=\s*(\{(?:.|\n)+?\});'. Causes: icourses changed its player/page template, removed the inline flashvars, or get_content returned an error/interstitial page instead of the video page.

Common situations: Site redesign replacing the flash player markup; anti-bot page or login wall returned instead of real content; URL pointing to a non-video resource page that never had flashvars.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of soimort/you-get@049548f3f3 (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/659b2949c4e50382. Report an issue: GitHub.