YouTube API to fetch all videos on a channel

We need a video list by channel name of YouTube (using the API).

We can get a channel list (only channel name) by using the below API:

https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/channels?v=2&q=tendulkar

Below is a direct link of channels

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqAEtEr0A0Eo2IVcuWBfB9g

Or

WWW.YouTube.com/channel/HC-8jgBP-4rlI

Now, we need videos of channel >> UCqAEtEr0A0Eo2IVcuWBfB9g or HC-8jgBP-4rlI.

We tried

https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?v=2&uploader=partner&User=UC7Xayrf2k0NZiz3S04WuDNQ https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?v=2&uploader=partner&q=UC7Xayrf2k0NZiz3S04WuDNQ

But, it does not help.

We need all the videos posted on the channel. Videos uploaded to a channel can be from multiple users thus I don't think providing a user parameter would help...

You need to look at the YouTube Data API. You will find there documentation about how the API can be accessed. You can also find client libraries.

You could also make the requests yourself. Here is an example URL that retrieves the latest videos from a channel:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/search?key={your_key_here}&channelId={channel_id_here}&part=snippet,id&order=date&maxResults=20

After that you will receive a JSON with video ids and details, and you can construct your video URL like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v={video_id_here}

First, you need to get the ID of the playlist that represents the uploads from the user/channel:

https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/channels/list#try-it

You can specify the username with the forUsername={username} param, or specify mine=true to get your own (you need to authenticate first). Include part=contentDetails to see the playlists.

GET https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=contentDetails&forUsername=jambrose42&key={YOUR_API_KEY}

In the result "relatedPlaylists" will include "likes" and "uploads" playlists. Grab that "upload" playlist ID. Also note the "id" is your channelID for future reference.

Next, get a list of videos in that playlist:

https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/playlistItems/list#try-it

Just drop in the playlistId!

GET https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems?part=snippet%2CcontentDetails&maxResults=50&playlistId=UUpRmvjdu3ixew5ahydZ67uA&key={YOUR_API_KEY}

Here is a video from Google Developers showing how to list all videos in a channel in v3 of the YouTube API.

There are two steps:

1. Query Channels to get the "uploads" Id. eg https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?id={channel Id}&key={API key}&part=contentDetails

2. Use this "uploads" Id to query PlaylistItems to get the list of videos. eg https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems?playlistId={"uploads" Id}&key={API key}&part=snippet&maxResults=50

To get channels list :

Get Channels list by forUserName:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=snippet,contentDetails,statistics&forUsername=Apple&key=<your api key>

Get channels list by channel id:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels/?part=snippet,contentDetails,statistics&id=UCE_M8A5yxnLfW0KghEeajjw&key=<your api key>

Get Channel sections:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channelSections?part=snippet,contentDetails&channelId=UCE_M8A5yxnLfW0KghEeajjw&key=<your api key>

To get Playlists :

Get Playlists by Channel ID:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlists?part=snippet,contentDetails&channelId=UCq-Fj5jknLsUf-MWSy4_brA&maxResults=50&key=<your api key>

Get Playlists by Channel ID with pageToken:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlists?part=snippet,contentDetails&channelId=UCq-Fj5jknLsUf-MWSy4_brA&maxResults=50&key=<your api key>&pageToken=CDIQAA

To get PlaylistItems :

Get PlaylistItems list by PlayListId:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems?part=snippet,contentDetails&maxResults=25&playlistId=PLHFlHpPjgk70Yv3kxQvkDEO5n5tMQia5I&key=<your api key>

To get videos :

Get videos list by video id:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?part=snippet,contentDetails,statistics&id=YxLCwfA1cLw&key=<your api key>

Get videos list by multiple videos id:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?part=snippet,contentDetails,statistics&id=YxLCwfA1cLw,Qgy6LaO3SB0,7yPJXGO2Dcw&key=<your api key>

Get comments list

Get Comment list by video ID:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/commentThreads?part=snippet,replies&videoId=el****kQak&key=A**********k

Get Comment list by channel ID:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/commentThreads?part=snippet,replies&channelId=U*****Q&key=AI********k

Get Comment list by allThreadsRelatedToChannelId:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/commentThreads?part=snippet,replies&allThreadsRelatedToChannelId=UC*****ntcQ&key=AI*****k

Here all api's are Get approach.

Based on channel id we con't get all videos directly, that's the important point here.

For integration https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/quickstart/ios?ver=swift

> Here is the code that will return all video ids under your channel

<?php 
    $baseUrl = 'https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/';
    // https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/getting-started
    $apiKey = 'API_KEY';
    // If you don't know the channel ID see below
    $channelId = 'CHANNEL_ID';
     
    $params = [
        'id'=> $channelId,
        'part'=> 'contentDetails',
        'key'=> $apiKey
    ];
    $url = $baseUrl . 'channels?' . http_build_query($params);
    $json = json_decode(file_get_contents($url), true);
     
    $playlist = $json['items'][0]['contentDetails']['relatedPlaylists']['uploads'];
     
    $params = [
        'part'=> 'snippet',
        'playlistId' => $playlist,
        'maxResults'=> '50',
        'key'=> $apiKey
    ];
    $url = $baseUrl . 'playlistItems?' . http_build_query($params);
    $json = json_decode(file_get_contents($url), true);
     
    $videos = [];
    foreach($json['items'] as $video)
        $videos[] = $video['snippet']['resourceId']['videoId'];
     
    while(isset($json['nextPageToken'])){
        $nextUrl = $url . '&pageToken=' . $json['nextPageToken'];
        $json = json_decode(file_get_contents($nextUrl), true);
        foreach($json['items'] as $video)
            $videos[] = $video['snippet']['resourceId']['videoId'];
    }
    print_r($videos);

> Note: You can get channel id at > https://www.youtube.com/account_advanced after logged in.

Below is a Python alternative that does not require any special packages. By providing the channel id it returns a list of video links for that channel. Please note that you need an [API Key][1] for it to work.

import urllib
import json

def get_all_video_in_channel(channel_id):
    api_key = YOUR API KEY

    base_video_url = 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v='
    base_search_url = 'https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/search?'

    first_url = base_search_url+'key={}&channelId={}&part=snippet,id&order=date&maxResults=25'.format(api_key, channel_id)

    video_links = []
    url = first_url
    while True:
        inp = urllib.urlopen(url)
        resp = json.load(inp)

        for i in resp['items']:
            if i['id']['kind'] == "youtube#video":
                video_links.append(base_video_url + i['id']['videoId'])

        try:
            next_page_token = resp['nextPageToken']
            url = first_url + '&pageToken={}'.format(next_page_token)
        except:
            break
    return video_links

[1]: https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/getting-started "API key"

Thanks to the references shared here and elsewhere, I've made an online script / tool that one can use to obtain all videos of a channel.

It combines API calls to youtube.channels.list, playlistItems, videos. It uses recursive functions to make the asynchronous callbacks run the next iteration upon getting a valid response.

This also serves to limit the actual number of requests made at a time, hence keeping you safe from violating YouTube API rules. Sharing shortened snippets and then a link to the full code. I got around the 50 max results per call limitation by using the nextPageToken value that comes in the response to fetch the next 50 results and so on.

function getVideos(nextPageToken, vidsDone, params) {
    $.getJSON("https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems", {
        key: params.accessKey,
        part: "snippet",
        maxResults: 50,
        playlistId: params.playlistId,
        fields: "items(snippet(publishedAt, resourceId/videoId, title)), nextPageToken",
        pageToken: ( nextPageToken || '')
        },
        function(data) {
            // commands to process JSON variable, extract the 50 videos info

            if ( vidsDone < params.vidslimit) {

                // Recursive: the function is calling itself if
                // all videos haven't been loaded yet
                getVideos( data.nextPageToken, vidsDone, params);

            }
             else {
                 // Closing actions to do once we have listed the videos needed.
             }
    });
}

This got a basic listing of the videos, including id, title, date of publishing and similar. But to get more detail of each video like view counts and likes, one has to make API calls to videos.

// Looping through an array of video id's
function fetchViddetails(i) {
    $.getJSON("https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos", {
        key: document.getElementById("accesskey").value,
        part: "snippet,statistics",
        id: vidsList[i]
        }, function(data) {

            // Commands to process JSON variable, extract the video
            // information and push it to a global array
            if (i < vidsList.length - 1) {
                fetchViddetails(i+1) // Recursive: calls itself if the
                                     //            list isn't over.
            }
});

See the full code here, and live version here. (Edit: fixed github link)
Edit: Dependencies: JQuery, Papa.parse

Try with like the following. It may help you.

https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?author=cnn&v=2&orderby=updated&alt=jsonc&q=news

Here author as you can specify your channel name and "q" as you can give your search key word.

Just in three steps:

1. Subscriptions: list -> https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/subscriptions?part=snippet&maxResults=50&mine=true&access_token={oauth_token}

2. Channels: list -> https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=contentDetails&id={channel_id}&key={YOUR_API_KEY}

3. PlaylistItems: list -> https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems?part=snippet&playlistId={playlist_id}&key={YOUR_API_KEY}

Since everyone answering this question has problems due to the 500 video limit here's an alternate solution using youtube_dl in Python 3. Also, no API key is needed.

1. Install youtube_dl: sudo pip3 install youtube-dl
2. Find out your target channel's channel id. The ID is going to start with UC. Replace the C for Channel with U for Upload (i.e. UU...), this is the upload playlist.
3. Use the playlist downloader feature from youtube-dl. Ideally you do NOT want to download every video in the playlist which is the default, but only the metadata.

Example (warning -- takes tens of minutes):

import youtube_dl, pickle

             # UCVTyTA7-g9nopHeHbeuvpRA is the channel id (1517+ videos)
PLAYLIST_ID = 'UUVTyTA7-g9nopHeHbeuvpRA'  # Late Night with Seth Meyers

with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL({'ignoreerrors': True}) as ydl:

    playd = ydl.extract_info(PLAYLIST_ID, download=False)

    with open('playlist.pickle', 'wb') as f:
        pickle.dump(playd, f, pickle.HIGHEST_PROTOCOL)

    vids = [vid for vid in playd['entries'] if 'A Closer Look' in vid['title']]
    print(sum('Trump' in vid['title'] for vid in vids), '/', len(vids))

Short answer:

Here's a library called scrapetube That can help with that.

pip install scrapetube

import scrapetube

videos = scrapetube.get_channel("UC9-y-6csu5WGm29I7JiwpnA")

for video in videos:
    print(video['videoId'])

Long answer:

The module mentioned above was created by me due to a lack of any other solutions. Here's what i tried:

1. Selenium. It worked but had three big drawbacks: 1. It requires a web browser and driver to be installed. 2. has big CPU and memory requirements. 3. can't handle big channels.
2. Using youtube-dl. Like this:

import youtube_dl
    youtube_dl_options = {
        'skip_download': True,
        'ignoreerrors': True
    }
    with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(youtube_dl_options) as ydl:
        videos = ydl.extract_info(f'https://www.youtube.com/channel/{channel_id}/videos')

This also works for small channels, but for bigger ones i would get blocked by youtube for making so many requests in such a short time (because youtube-dl downloads more info for every video in the channel).

So i made the library scrapetube which uses the web API to get all the videos.

Using API version 2, which is deprecated, the URL for uploads (of channel UCqAEtEr0A0Eo2IVcuWBfB9g) is:

https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/users/UCqAEtEr0A0Eo2IVcuWBfB9g/uploads

There is an API version 3.

Recently I had to retrieve all videos from a channel, and according to YouTube developer documentation: https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/playlistItems/list

function playlistItemsListByPlaylistId($service, $part, $params) {
    $params = array_filter($params);
    $response = $service->playlistItems->listPlaylistItems(
        $part,
        $params
    );

    print_r($response);
}

playlistItemsListByPlaylistId($service,
    'snippet,contentDetails',
    array('maxResults' => 25, 'playlistId' => 'id of "uploads" playlist'));

Where $service is your Google_Service_YouTube object.

So you have to fetch information from the channel to retrieve the "uploads" playlist that actually has all the videos uploaded by the channel: https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/channels/list

If new with this API, I highly recommend to turn the code sample from the default snippet to the full sample.

So the basic code to retrieve all videos from a channel can be:

class YouTube
{
    const       DEV_KEY = 'YOUR_DEVELOPPER_KEY';
    private     $client;
    private     $youtube;
    private     $lastChannel;

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->client = new Google_Client();
        $this->client->setDeveloperKey(self::DEV_KEY);
        $this->youtube = new Google_Service_YouTube($this->client);
        $this->lastChannel = false;
    }

    public function getChannelInfoFromName($channel_name)
    {
        if ($this->lastChannel && $this->lastChannel['modelData']['items'][0]['snippet']['title'] == $channel_name)
        {
            return $this->lastChannel;
        }
        $this->lastChannel = $this->youtube->channels->listChannels('snippet, contentDetails, statistics', array(
            'forUsername' => $channel_name,
        ));
        return ($this->lastChannel);
    }

    public function getVideosFromChannelName($channel_name, $max_result = 5)
    {
        $this->getChannelInfoFromName($channel_name);
        $params = [
            'playlistId' => $this->lastChannel['modelData']['items'][0]['contentDetails']['relatedPlaylists']['uploads'],
            'maxResults'=> $max_result,
        ];
        return ($this->youtube->playlistItems->listPlaylistItems('snippet,contentDetails', $params));
    }
}

$yt = new YouTube();
echo '<pre>' . print_r($yt->getVideosFromChannelName('CHANNEL_NAME'), true) . '</pre>';

Sample solution in Python. Help taken from this video: video Like many other answers, upload id is to be retrieved from the channel id first.

import urllib.request
import json

key = "YOUR_YOUTUBE_API_v3_BROWSER_KEY"
#List of channels : mention if you are pasting channel id or username - "id" or "forUsername"
ytids = [["bbcnews","forUsername"],["UCjq4pjKj9X4W9i7UnYShpVg","id"]]
newstitles = []
for ytid,ytparam in ytids:
urld = "https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=contentDetails&"+ytparam+"="+ytid+"&key="+key
with urllib.request.urlopen(urld) as url:
datad = json.loads(url.read())
uploadsdet = datad['items']
#get upload id from channel id
uploadid = uploadsdet[0]['contentDetails']['relatedPlaylists']['uploads']
#retrieve list
urld = "https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems?part=snippet%2CcontentDetails&maxResults=50&playlistId="+uploadid+"&key="+key
with urllib.request.urlopen(urld) as url:
    datad = json.loads(url.read())

for data in datad['items']:
    ntitle =  data['snippet']['title']
    nlink = data['contentDetails']['videoId']
    newstitles.append([nlink,ntitle])

for link,title in newstitles:
print(link, title)

From https://stackoverflow.com/a/65440501/2585501:

This method is especially useful if a) the channel has more than 50 videos or if b) desire youtube video ids formatted in a flat txt list:

1. Obtain a Youtube API v3 key (see https://stackoverflow.com/a/65440324/2585501)
2. Obtain the Youtube Channel ID of the channel (see https://stackoverflow.com/a/16326307/2585501)
3. Obtain the Uploads Playlist ID of the channel: https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?id={channel Id}&key={API key}&part=contentDetails (based on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjUlmco7v2M)
4. Install youtube-dl (e.g. pip3 install --upgrade youtube-dl or sudo apt-get install youtube-dl)
5. Download the Uploads Playlist using youtube-dl: youtube-dl -j --flat-playlist "https://<yourYoutubePlaylist>" | jq -r '.id' | sed 's_^_https://youtu.be/_' > videoList.txt (see https://superuser.com/questions/1341684/youtube-dl-how-download-only-the-playlist-not-the-files-therein)

Posting long after the original question was asked, but I made a python package that does this using a very simple API. It gets all the videos uploaded to a channel, but I'm not sure about this part (included in the original question):

> Videos uploaded to a channel can be from multiple users thus I don't think providing a user parameter would help...

Maybe YouTube changed in the 8 years since this question was posted, but if it didn't, the package I made might not cover this case.

To use the API:

pip3 install -U yt-videos-list # macOS
pip  install -U yt-videos-list # Windows

# if that doesn't work, try
python3 -m pip install -U yt-videos-list # macOS
python  -m pip install -U yt-videos-list # Windows

Then open up a python interpreter

python3   # macOS
python    # Windows

and run the program:

from yt_videos_list import ListCreator
lc = ListCreator()

help(lc) # display API information - shows available parameters and functions

my_url = 'https://www.youtube.com/user/1veritasium'

lc.create_list_for(url=my_url)

• Python documentation (will be updated most frequently, so check this page for updates!)

• Repository homepage

• PyPI page

That's my Python solution, using Google API. Observations:

• Create a .env file to store your API Developer Key, and put it in your .gitignore file
• The parameter "forUserName" should be set with the name of the Youtube Channel (username). Alternatively, you can use the channel id, setting the parameter "id", instead of "forUserName".
• The object "playlistItem" gives you access to each video. I'm showing only its title but there are many other properties.

import os
import googleapiclient.discovery
from decouple import config
def main():
    os.environ["OAUTHLIB_INSECURE_TRANSPORT"] = "1"

    api_service_name = "youtube"
    api_version = "v3"
    DEVELOPER_KEY = config('API_KEY')

    youtube = googleapiclient.discovery.build(
        api_service_name, api_version, developerKey = DEVELOPER_KEY)

    request = youtube.channels().list(
        part="contentDetails",
        forUsername="username",
        # id="oiwuereru8987",
    )

    response = request.execute()
    for item in response['items']:
        playlistId = item['contentDetails']['relatedPlaylists']['uploads']
        nextPageToken = ''
        while (nextPageToken != None):
            playlistResponse = youtube.playlistItems().list(
                part='snippet',
                playlistId=playlistId,
                maxResults=25,
                pageToken=nextPageToken
            )
            playlistResponse = playlistResponse.execute()
            print(playlistResponse.keys())
            for idx, playlistItem in enumerate(playlistResponse['items']):
                print(idx, playlistItem['snippet']['title'])
            if 'nextPageToken' in playlistResponse.keys():
                nextPageToken = playlistResponse['nextPageToken']
            else:
                nextPageToken = None

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Example for the .env file

API_KEY=<Key_Here>

As the documentation states (link), you can use the channel resource type and operation List to get all the videos in an channel. This operation must be performed using argument 'channel id'.