Real simple python program that reads espn, yahoo*, clickydraft, and sleeperbot fantasy football draft boards to enhance your draft party by automatically playing a highlight video of the player who just got selected.
Works best with Chromecast devices, but can be viewed in a youtube browser on your computer if you like.
- for the newest version i've added support for espn and yahoo draft boards
This only will work with:
draftboards: espn, yahoo, sleeperbot, clickydraft, and basmith7's google drive board (For now)
display: youtube on your chromecast device or computer/HDMI out
browser: chrome web browser
Download the files in this repository to a directory anywhere you like.
You'll need to edit the config.py file so that it knows a little bit about your draft.
And depending on what options you'll be using, you might need to install some python packages.
OS: I ran this on my raspberry pi, ubuntu, windows 7, and windows 10 systems no problem. Software: Chrome browser Python Version 3
Packages.....
Package: requests. You will need requests. Install this if you don't have it.
pip install requests
The following packages are necessary if you're going to use chromecast. If not, you can skip past these.
pip install pychromecast
pip install protobuf
pip install zeroconf
pip install casttube
Now skip to the section that applies to you. There is a section for espn, yahoo, sleeper, clicky, and for the basmith7 draft board.
Using this with ESPN, Yahoo, or Clickydraft will require selenium.
pip install selenium
Selenium requires a specific "webdriver" for the version of chrome that you're running. Simple google search should help you find this and the instructions for what to do with the webdriver when you get it.
https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/downloads
For these boards, if you are going to be displaying on a chrome browser (youtube), then you'll need selenium installed. Follow the selenium instructions listed in the clickydraft section.
If displaying on chromecast with sleeperbot or basmith7, then no need for selenium.
After you've created your draft board, you will need to edit the config.py file.
Open it up with any text editor.
That file is small and only contains a few lines. Here's how it looks when you download it.
site="sleeper"
teams=12
rounds=16
chromeCast=False
chromeCastName="YOUR CHROMECAST NAME HERE"
draftBoardVisible=False
autoSearch=True
#SLEEPERBOT AND CLICKYDRAFT ONLY, boardNum is required (no quotes)
boardNum=12345
#basmith7 ONLY, basmith7URL is required (quotes needed)
basmith7URL="https://spreadsheetDocLink"
If you're using sleeperbot then keep the first line at site="sleeper" If you're using clickydraft then change the site line to site="clicky" ESPN, site="espn" and YAHOO, site="yahoo" If you're using basmith7, then site="basmith7"
If you have anything else in there, the app will exit as soon as you run it.
Super simple stuff here. Change your teams and rounds to the number of teams and rounds in your draft.
BoardNum is the number on the end of your clickydraft or sleeperbot URL.
https://clickydraft.com/draftapp/board/12345
https://sleeper.app/draft/nfl/12345
If this is what your URL looks like then the boardNum is 12345
Sleeper boardNum's are pretty long, like 18 digits. Best to copy/paste it.
Here you'll need to enter the link to your draft board. Make sure you use the SHAREABLE link which you can find by going to the upper right hand corner of the draft board (green box that says Share). Click that and get the shareable link. If you don't do this, then it will get your private link that won't be able to be accessed by this app.
Copy that link and enter it here, between the quotes like so:
basmith7URL="https://whateveryourlinkis"
chromeCast True or False.. If True then your vids will cast to a chromecast. If False then they'll play on a youtube screen on your laptop.
If you set this to True then you also need to list your chromecast's name in the next line. The name needs to be typed perfectly in order for it to work correctly, including all spaces, punctuation, and capitalization.
If the application cannot find your specific chromecast then it will auto-switch to using youtube on the computer. If you're not sure why this is happening then please check whether that computer can access that specific chromecast and if so, make sure the chromecast name is typed correctly.
The variable "draftboardvisible" is only used for clickydraft drafts, and can be set to True or False (capitalization is important). Default is False.
If you set it to True then the draft site will pop up on your screen. If you set it to False then it won't.
If you aren't going to use chromecast to display the vids then False is probably the best choice here because the point of this app is to display highlight videos.
If you are using chromecast, then you can set this to True if you want.
The last option is "autoSearch" which can be either True or False.
If it's set to True, the program will go out and search youtube for the first highlight reel it can find for that player name.
This is going to work fine for most players, however some players have common names so the youtube search might return a vid for a different player in a different sport.
You can change this behavior by placing a specific youtube video link of your choice in the vDict file for your draftboard. As you can see there are 5 different files. This is because there are very slight differences in how each board reads the players names.
vDictbasmith7.py
vDictClicky.py
vDictESPN.py
vDictSleeper.py
vDictYahoo.py
All of these files are in your folder already. The code will look in the correct file and grab whatever link you have placed in that player's entry in the dictionary.
If there is no link, then it will auto search on youtube.
You can stop the auto search functionality altogether with autoSearch=False . If you do this, then the code will ONLY play videos for the links that you provide in the dictionary.
Here's how the first few lines of the dictionary files look after you download... (using the vDictSleeper.py sleeperbot file since most of the users are on sleeper and not clicky)
vDictSleeper ={
"RBNYGSaquonBarkley":"",
"RBARIDavidJohnson":"",
"RBNOAlvinKamara":"",
"RBDALEzekielElliott":"8CJvUpV2jp0",
"WRHOUDeAndreHopkins":"",
"RBCARChristianMcCaffrey":"",
As you can see, there's one line for each player, and I've included an example of what the link should look like for Ezekiel Elliot. Do NOT change the first part of each line before the colon. The app uses that part to lookup each player as it's picked. If you change that part, the code will not be able to find anything for that player. It's very picky.
The capitalization here also matters. I've taken out all non-alphabetic characters out of the players' names like apostrophes, spaces, dashes, etc.
Going back to the Zeke example:
"RBDALEzekielElliott":"8CJvUpV2jp0",
That will tell the code that when zeke is picked, it will pull up the following link:
https://youtube.com/tv#/watch?v=8CJvUpV2jp0
If you don't want a specific vid for a player, and you WANT the auto search, then you need to delete everything between the quotes. So a player without a specific vid link will have two double quotes at the end, followed by a comma. Like this:
"RBDALEzekielElliott":"",
Any change in that will probably cause problems.
I've included between 400-700 possible players that you're allowed to draft in the apps, depending on the platform. So you are set even if you have up to 20 team, 20 round draft :)
Before running, make sure you've closed out of all of your open chrome windows.
At your command line, in your installed directory, type:
python draftvid.py
If you're using chromecast, you'll get a message stating whether you connected to your device correctly or not.
If you connected then you're ready to draft!
If you didn't connect, or aren't using chromecast, then a chrome window will pop up in fullscreen, ready to display your youtube vids. In this scenario, this app is best used when you output the video (HDMI) to a big screen TV. Then enter the picks on a different device, like your phone or another laptop. Makes the experience a lot cooler.
Because ESPN doesn't allow the same account to have a draft screen open on multiple devices, you have to create a 2nd owner for your team. This is very easy to do, just go to LM Tools/Edit Team Owners, then find the team that you control and add a 2nd owner. This requires you to add a new account and sometimes a new email address, so do this in advance of your draft.
You will use the 2nd owner account to run this program.
When you first run the program, it will open up the regular ESPN fantasy football page. Log in using the 2nd owner account, then select your team, and then click the "Join Your Draft" button.
*Note. IF you choose to draft from the same system that will be displaying the videos, then you will not need a 2nd account. although I HIGHLY recommend against that as it's easy to screw the program up.
Once you open up the draft screen, you can leave it alone. The code will reload your draft, then minimize the screen and selenium starts reading the board.
For Yahoo Drafts...
Very similar to ESPN...
Because Yahoo doesn't allow the same account to have a draft screen open on multiple devices, you have to create a 2nd owner for your team. This is very easy to do, just go to My Team/Edit Team Info, and then go to the section titled "Co-manager settings". From here, add the 2nd owner. Again, like ESPN, doing this will require you to add or already have a separate account and sometimes a new email address, so do this in advance of your draft.
You will use the 2nd owner account to run this program.
When you first run the program, it will open up the regular yahoo fantasy football page. Log in using the 2nd owner account, then select your team, and then click the "Enter Live Draft" button.
You CANNOT draft from the same browser with yahoo draft boards! It will not work correctly.
Once your board is opened, I suggest just leaving it alone and let it run. The code will reload your draft, then minimize the screen and selenium starts reading the board.
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One thing I should mention is that the first time you run this in a chrome browser, youtube will play an ad. For whatever reason it always does this on fresh installs and the first time you run it every day. But then afterwards, the ad doesn't pop up very often. I guess it depends on youtube's mood at the time but sometimes you're gonna get an ad here and there. If you can figure out how to block youtube ads, please IM me lol. The ads don't seem to pop up as often when you use chromecast, so I guess that's another good reason to use chromecast for this.
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You can avoid ads altogether with a youtube subscription. They give 30 day subs for free, then you can cancel. I'll probably end up doing this for my drafts this year.
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Some player highlight videos on youtube have ridiculously long introductions. You can skip those introductions on a video-by-video basis if you are specifying that video in the vDict file. For instance, take the zeke example from above.
"RBDALEzekielElliott":"8CJvUpV2jp0",
If you want the vid to start at the 30 second mark, you need to add &t=30 to the yahoo vid code. Example here:
"RBDALEzekielElliott":"8CJvUpV2jp0&t=30",
I am thedaynos and I have a patreon if you feel like donating to my "i don't code for free (actually i guess i do) foundation" https://www.patreon.com/thedaynos
Feel free to report issues here on github if you have questions or find a bug.