Python Search Toolkit (Rough Draft)

This minimal Python implementation covers three core needs:

1. Collect transcripts from YouTube channels.
2. Ingest transcripts/metadata into Elasticsearch.
3. Expose a simple Flask search UI that queries Elasticsearch directly.

The code lives alongside the existing C# stack so you can experiment without touching production infrastructure.

Setup

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r python_app/requirements.txt

Configure your environment as needed:

export ELASTIC_URL=http://localhost:9200
export ELASTIC_INDEX=this_little_corner_py
export ELASTIC_USERNAME=elastic          # optional
export ELASTIC_PASSWORD=secret           # optional
export ELASTIC_API_KEY=XXXX              # optional alternative auth
export ELASTIC_CA_CERT=/path/to/ca.pem   # optional, for self-signed TLS
export ELASTIC_VERIFY_CERTS=1            # set to 0 to skip verification (dev only)
export ELASTIC_DEBUG=0                   # set to 1 for verbose request/response logging
export LOCAL_DATA_DIR=./data/video_metadata  # defaults to this
export YOUTUBE_API_KEY=AIza...           # required for live collection

1. Collect Transcripts

python -m python_app.transcript_collector \
  --channel UCxxxx \
  --output data/raw \
  --max-pages 2

Each video becomes a JSON file containing metadata plus transcript segments (TranscriptSegment). Downloads require both google-api-python-client and youtube-transcript-api, as well as a valid YOUTUBE_API_KEY.

Already have cached JSON? You can skip this step and move straight to ingesting.

2. Ingest Into Elasticsearch

python -m python_app.ingest \
  --source data/video_metadata \
  --index this_little_corner_py

The script walks the source directory, builds bulk requests, and creates the index with a lightweight mapping when needed. Authentication is handled via ELASTIC_USERNAME / ELASTIC_PASSWORD if set.

3. Serve the Search Frontend

python -m python_app.search_app

Visit http://localhost:8080/ and you’ll see a barebones UI that:

• Lists channels via a terms aggregation.
• Queries titles/descriptions/transcripts with toggleable exact, fuzzy, and phrase clauses plus optional date sorting.
• Surfaces transcript highlights.
• Lets you pull the full transcript for any result on demand.
• Shows a stacked-by-channel timeline for each search query (with /frequency offering a standalone explorer) powered by D3.js.
• Supports a query-string mode toggle so you can write advanced Lucene queries (e.g. meaning OR purpose, meaning~2 for fuzzy matches, title:(meaning crisis)), while the default toggles stay AND-backed.

Integration Notes

• All modules share configuration through python_app.config.CONFIG, so you can fine-tune paths or credentials centrally.
• The ingest flow reuses existing JSON schema from data/video_metadata, so no re-download is necessary if you already have the dumps.
• Everything is intentionally simple (no Celery, task queues, or custom auth) to keep the draft approachable and easy to extend.

Feel free to expand on this scaffold—add proper logging, schedule transcript updates, or flesh out the UI—once you’re happy with the baseline behaviour.