How to fetch only free videos from YouTube search api(V3)? - youtube-api

Question

I am using YouTube Data's Search API v3 to fetch videos. I am able to fetch videos properly with the below mentioned HTTPS GET request. But this API is listing paid videos too, like the one having the ID FKUvkKsTzV8. That I would like to skip from fetching.
I have gone through the Search API documentation, but was unable to identify the filter for fetching only free videos -- not paid videos.
Please suggest me the filter to fetch only free videos from Search API, if any.
Here is the URL of my HTTPS GET request:
https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/search?part=snippet&maxResults=5&q=frozen&key=[My api key]&type=video&order=relevance
Edited with more information:
The given video is an example, which will play in some regions only. So adding some more similar to the above mentioned video. I would like to skip these kind of videos from my search result.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMWjixQbqXY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zat88Rsxp94
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YQ9W0BP2Gw
The videos which are free to play is given below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TavVZMewpY

Answer 1

Looking into the Videos resource meta-data attached to the videos of which ID you mentioned within your question, I deduce that your issue may be reformulated as follows:
Do use the Search.list API endpoint for to search for videos -- using the parameter q as needed --, but exclude from the result set that's provided by the endpoint those videos that are not allowed to be viewed in certain (given) regions.
The Videos resource attached to each video does contain the info that specifies that particular condition above, namely the properties:
contentDetails.regionRestriction (object)
The regionRestriction object contains information about the countries where a video is (or is not) viewable. The object will contain either the contentDetails.regionRestriction.allowed property or the contentDetails.regionRestriction.blocked property.
contentDetails.regionRestriction.allowed[] (list)
A list of region codes that identify countries where the video is viewable. If this property is present and a country is not listed in its value, then the video is blocked from appearing in that country. If this property is present and contains an empty list, the video is blocked in all countries.
contentDetails.regionRestriction.blocked[] (list)
A list of region codes that identify countries where the video is blocked. If this property is present and a country is not listed in its value, then the video is viewable in that country. If this property is present and contains an empty list, the video is viewable in all countries.
Unfortunately, one cannot specify explicitly to the Search.list endpoint a filter based on these properties.
Nevertheless, you may retain as much IDs as you can from Search.list and then query the Videos.list API endpoint for precisely these properties with the purpose of filtering out programatically the videos that are not viewable in the regions of your interest.
The URL that will invoke the Videos.list endpoint would look like:
https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?key=$APP_KEY&id=$VIDEO_IDS&part=contentDetails,id&fields=items(id,contentDetails(regionRestriction))&maxResults=$VIDEO_COUNT
where $APP_KEY is your API key, $VIDEO_IDS is a comma-separated list of video IDs and $VIDEO_COUNT is the number of video IDs that $VIDEO_IDS contains. (Note that $VIDEO_COUNT should not exceed 50.)
Note that the URL above is using the parameter fields for to obtain from the endpoint only the properties that are of actual use. (It's always good to ask from the API only the info that is really needed.)
When setting $VIDEO_COUNT to 5 and $VIDEO_IDS to
FKUvkKsTzV8,ZMWjixQbqXY,Zat88Rsxp94,2YQ9W0BP2Gw,7TavVZMewpY
within the URL above, Videos.list returns the following JSON text:
{
"items": [
{
"id": "FKUvkKsTzV8",
"contentDetails": {
"regionRestriction": {
"allowed": [
"BE",
"NL"
]
}
}
},
{
"id": "ZMWjixQbqXY",
"contentDetails": {
"regionRestriction": {
"allowed": [
"NL"
]
}
}
},
{
"id": "Zat88Rsxp94",
"contentDetails": {
"regionRestriction": {
"allowed": [
"BE",
"NL"
]
}
}
},
{
"id": "2YQ9W0BP2Gw",
"contentDetails": {
"regionRestriction": {
"allowed": [
"PE",
"KG",
"PA",
"PL",
"PH",
"TZ",
"TW",
"TH",
"TJ",
"TM",
"PY",
"KZ",
"GR",
"CY",
"GT",
"CZ",
"CV",
"CR",
"GA",
"CL",
"CO",
"CI",
"SN",
"SI",
"SK",
"SE",
"NP",
"KH",
"NI",
"ID",
"NO",
"NL",
"NA",
"NE",
"PT",
"BZ",
"BY",
"BW",
"BO",
"BJ",
"BF",
"BE",
"ZW",
"MU",
"MT",
"VE",
"EE",
"EC",
"IS",
"MD",
"RW",
"ML",
"AZ",
"ZM",
"LV",
"AR",
"AO",
"AM",
"TG",
"SG",
"DK",
"LT",
"UZ",
"UY",
"DO",
"HU",
"LA",
"HN",
"UG",
"LK",
"UA",
"FI",
"SV"
]
}
}
},
{
"id": "7TavVZMewpY",
"contentDetails": {}
}
]
}
This response indicates that the video identified by FKUvkKsTzV8 is viewable only in NL and BE regions, while the video identified by 7TavVZMewpY has no region restrictions at all (i.e. is freely-viewable everywhere).
Now, it's quite simple to access the properties under the object items[].contantDetails.regionRestriction for to exclude from a filtered result set those video IDs that are not viewable within the regions of your interest.
Addendum
Not sure that what follows will help, but nevertheless, I'll have to mention that the Search.list endpoint does have the following parameter:
regionCode (string)
The regionCode parameter instructs the API to return search results for videos that can be viewed in the specified country. The parameter value is an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code.
The above official specification does not indicate whether regionCode allows one to specify a set of regions, or, otherwise, how to specify to regionCode the set of all regions.