soimort/you-get · error · Exception

Unknown url pattern

Error message

Unknown url pattern

What it means

Raised as plain Exception in icourses_playlist_download (src/you_get/extractors/icourses.py:113). After routing the URL through its known branches (course listing pages with pagination, viewCharacterDetail.action, changeforVideo.action), none of them produced any (resId, courseId) video entries — video_list is empty — so the URL layout is unrecognized.

Source

Thrown at src/you_get/extractors/icourses.py:113

        playlist = public_course_playlist(url)
        for video in playlist:
            icourses_download(video[0], output_dir=output_dir, **kwargs)
        return
    elif 'coursestatic' in url:
        course_page = get_content(url)
        page_navi_vars = re.search(page_type_patt, course_page)

        if page_navi_vars is None:  # type 2 shared course
            video_list = icourses_playlist_new(url, course_page)
        else:  # type 1 shared course
            sec_page = get_content(ep.format(page_navi_vars.group(2), page_navi_vars.group(1)))
            video_list = re.findall(resid_courseid_patt, sec_page)
    elif 'viewCharacterDetail.action' in url or 'changeforVideo.action' in url:
        page = get_content(url)
        video_list = re.findall(resid_courseid_patt, page)

    if not video_list:
        raise Exception('Unknown url pattern')

    for video in video_list:
        video_url = change_for_video_ip.format(video[0], video[1])
        sleep(random.Random().randint(0, 5))  # Prevent from blockage
        icourses_download(video_url, output_dir=output_dir, **kwargs)


def icourses_playlist_new(url, page=None):
    # 2 helpers using same interface in the js code
    def to_chap(course_id, chap_id, mod):
        ep = 'http://www.icourses.cn/jpk/viewCharacterDetail2.action?courseId={}&characId={}&mod={}'
        req = post_content(ep.format(course_id, chap_id, mod), post_data={})
        return req

    def to_sec(course_id, chap_id, mod):
        ep = 'http://www.icourses.cn/jpk/viewCharacterDetail2.action?courseId={}&characId={}&mod={}'
        req = post_content(ep.format(course_id, chap_id, mod), post_data={})
        return req

View on GitHub (pinned to 049548f3f3)

Solutions

  1. Confirm the URL is one of the three known icourses page kinds and opens correctly in a browser.
  2. Log course_page and check whether resid_courseid_patt still matches the HTML; if not, update the regexes for the new markup.
  3. Upgrade you-get — icourses extractors are maintained against the live site.
Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

KNOWN_MARKERS = ('coursestatic', 'viewCharacterDetail.action', 'changeforVideo.action', 'showResDetail.action')

def icourses_url_plausibly_supported(url):
    return any(m in url for m in KNOWN_MARKERS) or re.match(
        r'http://www\.icourses\.cn/coursestatic/course_\d+\.html', url) is not None

Try / catch

try:
    icourses_playlist_download(url, output_dir)
except Exception as e:
    if str(e) == 'Unknown url pattern':
        flag_extractor_stale(url)  # markup changed; needs human/regex update
    else:
        raise

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: Passing an icourses.cn URL whose path contains none of the known markers ('coursestatic'/'course_' listing, 'viewCharacterDetail.action', 'changeforVideo.action'), OR one of those pages whose HTML changed so re.findall(resid_courseid_patt, ...) returns nothing and the pagination regex also fails to match (page_navi_vars None AND the type-2 fallback yields no videos).

Common situations: icourses.cn site redesign breaking the regexes; new course page types; URLs with parameters/redirects landing on an unexpected page.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of soimort/you-get@049548f3f3 (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/5d82662e52d4a745. Report an issue: GitHub.