How to fetch Youtube public channel stats without authentication - youtube-api

I am trying to fetch metrics like views, likes, dislikes for videos in some popular public Youtube channels and also subscription information of the Channelsa on a daily basis. Also, country wise stats and gender wise stats for the channels required. But, Youtube Reporting API always prompts authentication. Is there any way to fetch those metrics for public Youtube channels without user authentication?(https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/analytics/v1/reports - need to use this API). Your suggestions will be very helpful.

For some of read-only requests you can just use access token without need to authorize. Check the documentation. Each request's documentation tells if authorization is needed.

The API you linked to is part of the "YouTube Analytics and Reporting APIs", which is split up in these very two pieces - analytics and reporting. I don't see why you need to use this exact API, but I can tell you that you won't succeed with it. This API is intended for channel owners and network owners to get information about their own channels. You absolutely have to authenticate via OAuth in order to use it, there is no way around this.
In order to get video and channel metrics, you can consult the YouTube Data API. Here, an API key from the Google Cloud Console will let you fetch any public data without further authentication. But it will not provide you with data records in specific periods of time, it always returns the current values of the requested properties.
In other words: what you are asking is, as far as I know, impossible to achieve with any official YouTube API.
A workaround for your problem would be to fetch the desired properties via the Data API on a, say, daily basis and compare their values to the previous day's values and calculate the delta.

Related

youtube search by keyword internal working

Need a clarification on this:
As per docs "By default, a search result set identifies matching video, channel, and playlist resources", how this matching takes place, do they search on comments also, any idea on this.
Thanks !!
The YouTube api operates on the same rate limits as the other google apis.
There are project based limits and user based limits.
You can see the limits on google developer console.
My project can make a max 1800000 requests per minute
It also has a quota cost limit of 10000 which is not really what it sound like.
Then each user can make a max of 180000 request per minute.
This not related to the amount of data a user has on their account. Its strictly related to the number of requests or the cost of the request your application or a user can make over a period of time.
You can request additional daily quota over the development 10k if you want. Just submit the form over on google cloud console.
I am not aware of increased abilities with YouTube APIs for big YouTube channels.

Get Current Live Streams for a List of Channel IDs (Youtube API)

I need to get the current live streams for a list of channelIds. After a lot of research it looks like the only solution is to use the search endpoint, specifying the channelId. This solution will not work because the very high unit cost (100 units per channel in the list). Additionally, I would be polling the live streams for this channel list every 5 minutes or so. This would be far too costly to work.
Potential Solutions:
1) Push Notifications API
https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/guides/push_notifications
If this API could also send notifications for when a channel starts a live stream, this would completely solve my problem
2) Activities Endpoint
https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/activities/list
If this endpoint would also include livestream activity, I could use this since the cost would only be 1 unit per channel, which could work.
3) Search Endpoint
https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/search/list
If this endpoint could accept multiple channelIds, I could use a few search calls to get all of the channels, which might also work.
Are there any other ways to solve this problem? It seems like a pretty valid use case for the Youtube API to be able to get live streams for a channel without the extraordinary cost per channel.

How to use Youtube api v3 on client computer without API-key?

I am planning to make a browser extension which uses Youtube data API v3. Since the code is public to the user, I am unable to use my API-key in the code. What is the correct way to use API in such a scenario? Also, since the API call will be made from user's browser, is there any other way to fetch data without using API-key at all?
TL;DR
On the API screen of Google Cloud Console, create a new key or edit an existing one to have no restriction. This will enable anyone to use this key to make requests the moment you publish it. There is no way to use the YouTube API without a key (or token respectively, when using OAuth). Your clients are allowed to consume up to 50.000.000 quota units per day, after which your app will essentially break for the rest of the day unless you buy more quota.
However, I have to disagree with the statement that you cannot (or "shouldn't") publish your API key; in certain scenarios, this may very well be desired.
Detailed Explanation
Web application keys used to be organized in two groups: Server keys and browser keys, the former of which where to be kept secret on the server of the web application, while the latter was sent to the client for use in JavaScript. Server keys could be configured to only be accepted from certain IP addresses. That way, even if someone got hold of your key, they wouldn't be able to use it. Browser keys could be restricted to a specified referrer, i.e. the domain (as in DNS) of your web application, so it wouldn't work on other sites beside your own either.
Nowadays, there is no distinction between server and browser keys anymore, they are simply called "API keys". This union makes perfect sense to me, since the only difference between the two types was how they were restricted. With the new API keys, one can still choose how to restrict its usage - or choose to not restrict the key at all.
This is where we get back to your case: It is, of course, possible to publish a key and at the same time not restrict it. Depending on how many users are using your app (and will be using it in the future) and how many are using your key for their own app (which you have no control over), the 50 million quota limit will work out for you or it will not.
An then there's responsibility as well. You are responsible for the queries that are made with your API key. This is probably one of the reasons why YouTube doesn't allow for requests without a valid key: They need to stay in control of their service and, naturally, want to protect it from DOS attacks. If someone does mischief with your key, you are the one who gets punished for it, usually by deactivation of the key.

How do I get revenue reports from a YouTube CMS account using an API (for an MCN)?

I have access to a YouTube CMS account (for an MCN). On YouTube I can do lots and lots of things with it and this also includes downloading CSV reports which contain detailed information about earnings.
However I want to do some automatic processing of that data and thus access the data using an API instead of a manual CSV download. It looks like the YouTube Analytics Content Owner Reports should contain these data as well, thus I tried to get some data from this API (for now only using the API Explorer) but the only thing I was able to get was a "Forbidden" response.
The API Explorer tells me that for a CMS account I need to specify contentOwner==OWNER_NAME but there is nowhere an explanation what that OWNER_NAME would be. I tried to just insert the displayed name of my CMS account, replacing spaces with underscores, but no success. How do I find out what my owner name is?
Additionally, when I authenticate using OAuth I receive as usual the list of accounts where I can choose which one to use (e.g. all the YouTube channels I am a manager of), but the CMS account is not listed. However if I go to YouTube I can click on the top right corner and then switch to the CMS. No idea if that is important...
Then again, maybe I am totally on the wrong track, because I want to get the reports for all channels connected to my MCN but that does not mean that I own the content. So maybe I am no content owner? In this case: Which is the correct way to request the reports from the API?
First of all, the CMS account is not a separate account you can log in via Oath. It is more like a privilege and it is connected to one of your google/youtube accounts. This is in contrast to youtube's regular channel-management, where each channel has it's own login credentials.
I attached a screenshot of my youtube account-selector-view, where the CMS belongs to the account name#email.com, which is also the account you have to use for oauth authorization to access your CMS reports.
Furthermore you can see the name of the CMS, in this case it "CMSName". So, generally this is the name you would use for contentOwner==CMSName. However, your CMS Name seems to include whitespaces. Unfortunately, i cannot reconstruct this case because of missing admin-rights, but i would suggest you the _ for whitespaces too, because " " and "%20" do not map the regular expression for valid params.
But you said, that you had no success by trying it. But there are too error scenarios:
403 Forbidden: The name of the CMS could either be wrong or the selected OAth account does not have the required privileges. Do you have all required Scopes and selected the correct account?
400 Bad Request: This happens when the request is invalid per se. So if you choose contentOwner==CMSName as ids param, a filter parameter is always required, e.g. channel==[ChannelIdForWhichIHaveCMSRights]. So, a API request, that should generally work, would look like this: https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/analytics/v1/reports?ids=contentOwner%3D%3D[CONTENTOWNER_ID]&start-date=2015-01-01&end-date=2015-01-15&metrics=views&filters=channel%3D%3D[CHANNEL_ID_WITH_CMS_RIGHTS]&access_token=[OATH_TOKEN_FOR_RIGHT_ACCOUNT]
If both cases won't work for you and you're still getting 403 errors, let us do some debugging and try to fetch the content Owner Id. I will now introduce the YouTube Content ID API https://developers.google.com/youtube/partner/.
A few words in advance: You have to activate the API in your developer console, like any other API you want to use for your app. BUT:
Note: The YouTube Content ID API is intended for use by YouTube content partners and is not accessible to all developers or to all YouTube users. If you do not see the YouTube Content ID API as one of the services listed in the Google Developers Console, see www.youtube.com/partner to learn more about the YouTube Partner Program.
You don't see it in the list auf available APIs, unless your account is connected to a CMS and some time has past... It takes 7-14 days unless the Content ID API is available for your account. This is a information i got from the support, but they told me, that it is an automated step.
So, now lets assume, that you already have access to the Content ID API.
You can fetch a list of contentOwnerShips that belong to an account. You can use the API explorer https://developers.google.com/youtube/partner/docs/v1/contentOwners/list#try-it just use as param fetchMine=true and authorize with the https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtubepartner-content-owner-readonly scope. The response looks like this:
{
"kind": "youtubePartner#contentOwnerList",
"items": [
{
"kind": "youtubePartner#contentOwner",
"id": "[CMS_ID]",
"displayName": "[DisplayName]",
"primaryNotificationEmails": [
"mail#random.xx"
],
"conflictNotificationEmail": "mail#random.xx",
"disputeNotificationEmails": [
"mail#random.xx"
],
"fingerprintReportNotificationEmails": [
"mail#random.xx"
]
}
]
}
This is where you get your CMS_ID from, you can also use it for any API Request as onBehalfOfContentOwner.
To get a list of all channels that belong to the ownership, simply make this request
"https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=contentDetails&managedByMe=true&onBehalfOfContentOwner=[CONTENTOWNER]&access_token=[ACCESS_TOKEN]"
But this request requires the granted "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtubepartner" scope.
Hoe this could help you, feel free to ask further questions.

Twitter strategy: Streaming API vs. REST API

I'm working on a kind of a twitter wall. Users can login with twitter and create their own wall, which will display the tweets for certain terms/hashtags.
I'm still looking for the best strategy to get the data out of the Twitter APIs.
Following some of my thoughts:
Strategy 1: Streaming API
Open a single stream (POST statuses/filter) for all walls
Each hashtag is added to the track parameter
When new tweets arrive, they will be processed and sent to the corresponding wall
("one account, one application, one open connection" cf. https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/14935)
Problems with the Streaming API
Streaming api is limited to 400 keywords to track
What to do if there are more than 400 keywords to track?
Streaming api is limited to 1% of the tweets of the firehose
It's very difficult to get above 1% of the firehose, but if you're tracking a term like "apple" it'd be pretty easy to exceed the 1%. (cf. https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/6349)
How can I handle such popular terms? Blacklist them?
Strategy 2: REST Search API
Store user access tokens
Poll the Search API (GET search/tweets) on behalf of the user, respecting the rate limits of 180 queries per 15 minute
(cf. https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/11141)
Problems with the REST Search API
Polling
Could get very expensive to poll the API for a lot of users.
Do you have any suggestions/recommendations which strategy would fit the best? Are there already solutions for these problems?
Best regards

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