EDGI Scripts

Helper scripts for EDGI's digital infrastructure.

We use this as a catch-all for simple scripts that help with repeating tasks. Many of them run automatically in the cloud.

Table of Contents

• Technologies Used
• About These Automated Scripts
• Script Catalog

Technologies Used

• Python >=3.8. A programming language common in scripting.
• Click. A Python library for writing simple command-line tools.
• GitHub Actions. A script-running service that runs scheduled tasks for us in the cloud.

About these Automated Scripts

Some of these scripts are run automatically at regular intervals, using GitHub's "actions workflow" feature. The schedule is set in the .github/workflows/zoom-upload.yml file within this repo.

Script Catalog

Backup to Internet Archive: archive.sh

This script is used to run periodically and ensure that recent copies of the EDGI website are backed up to the Internet Archive.

This script is not run automatically.

Usage

bash scripts/archive.sh envirodatagov.org

Convert Zoom timestamps for YouTube: convert_transcript_timestamps.py

This script is used from the local workstation to convert the Zoom chat text transcript into a form that's friendly to post into YouTube video descriptions or comments. When the Zoom timestamps are shifted to account for when the recording started, then the timecodes will link directly to the spot in the video where the comment was made.

This script is not run automatically.

• Sample chat transcript

See commands

Usage

python scripts/convert_transcript_timestamps.py --help
python scripts/convert_transcript_timestamps.py transcript.txt > transposed-transcript.txt

Zoom-to-YouTube Uploader: upload_zoom_recordings.py and auth.py

This script cycles through each Zoom cloud recording longer than 60 seconds in duration and:

• uploads video to youtube as unlisted video
• sets video title to be <Zoom title> - Mmm DD, YYYY of recorded date
• sets video license to "Creative Commons - Attribution"
• sets video category to "Science & Technology"
• adds video to a default unlisted playlist, "Uploads from Zoom"
• adds video to a call-specific playlist based on meeting title and top (if there is a relevant playlist). You can see the playlists in upload_zoom_recordings.py.
• deletes original video file from Zoom (not audio or chat log)

This script is run every hour.

Note: the script isn't smart enough to detect duplicate videos being uploaded more than once, but YouTube will recognize and disable them after upload

Usage via GitHub Actions

For forcing a cloud run on-demand: Visit the actions page and click the “run workflow” button near the top-right. In the popup, select your options and click “run workflow.” (You will need to have the right permissions set to click the button.)

Local Usage

Setup

Quick reference for Ubuntu (may vary).

apt-get install python python-pip
python -m venv .venv-edgi-scripts
# To activate the virtualenv:
source .venv-edgi-scripts/bin/activate

Get Python 3.8. This packages makes use of modern Python features and requires Python 3.8+. If you don't have Python 3.8, we recommend using conda to install it. (You don't need admin privileges to install or use it, and it won't interfere with any other installations of Python already on your system.)

Usage

pip install -r requirements.txt

# Copy `.env.sample` to `.env` for you own local use, then manually fill in the
# values.
cp .env.sample .env
vim .env

# Load the secrets from `.env` into your current environment.
source .env

# To use the existing EDGI youtube-uploader app, decrypt its secrets:
openssl aes-256-cbc -k "$EDGI_ZOOM_API_SECRET" -in client_secret.json.enc -out client_secret.json -d -md sha256
# ALTERNATIVELY, to use a new set of Google Cloud app credentials, copy your new
# `client_secret.json` to the repo root directory. You can download it from the
# Google API Console. See:
# See: https://github.com/tokland/youtube-upload#setup

# Authorize the script to use EDGI's YouTube account.
# This needs to be done from a system with a windowed browser (i.e. not a
# server). It will generate a file named `.youtube-upload-credentials.json` in
# the repo root dir. If running the script on a server is required, you will
# need to transfer this file from your workstation onto the server.
python scripts/auth.py

# Download from Zoom and upload to YouTube
python scripts/upload_zoom_recordings.py

Authorization

This script needs authorized access to EDGI’s Zoom account and YouTube account in order to do its work.

Zoom

To access the Zoom API, you have to create a Zoom app. Ours is not published, so it can only be used in EDGI’s Zoom account. For the scripts to access Zoom through the app, they require 3 values that are stored in environment variables:

1. EDGI_ZOOM_ACCOUNT_ID
2. EDGI_ZOOM_CLIENT_ID
3. EDGI_ZOOM_CLIENT_SECRET

You can find the appropriate value’s on the app’s “App Credentials” page. You can get to that by going to the App Marketplace, clicking on “manage” in the top right, and clicking on the app in the list of “created apps.”

YouTube

YouTube authorization is slightly more complicated. We have a Google Cloud app that represents our script. Our YouTube account must then authorize that app to act on its behalf to upload videos. That authorization periodically expires and needs to be manually recreated.

The basic credentials for the app are stored (encrypted) in client_secret.json.enc. The authorization for the app to work in YouTube is stored (encrypted) in .youtube-upload-credentials.json.enc. When the upload_zoom_recordings.py script runs, it simply uses the authorization file. If the authorization is expired, you can generate a new one from the app’s credentials (in client_secret.json.enc) using the auth.py script:

1. Decrypt the client_secret.json.enc file:

   # Ensure you have `EDGI_ZOOM_API_SECRET` set to the decryption key.
   openssl aes-256-cbc -d -k "$EDGI_ZOOM_API_SECRET" -in client_secret.json.enc -out client_secret.json -md sha256

2. Run the authorization script. It will open a browser window to a YouTube login page, where you should log into EDGI’s YouTube account. Then it will ask you to authorize the app. Afterward, you can close the window.

   python scripts/auth.py

   The script should have created a file named .youtube-upload-credentials.json.

3. Encrypt the authorization:

   openssl aes-256-cbc -e -k "$EDGI_ZOOM_API_SECRET" -in .youtube-upload-credentials.json -out .youtube-upload-credentials.json.enc

4. Commit the new authorization to git for later use!

   git add .youtube-upload-credentials.json.enc
   git commit
   git push

Contributing Guidelines

We love improvements to our tools! EDGI has general guidelines for contributing to all of our organizational repos.

For repo-specific details, see our CONTRIBUTING.md.

License & Copyright

Copyright (C) 2017 Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 3.0.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

See the LICENSE file for details.