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I am currently using the YouTube Data Channel API, which allows me to retrieve the Channel ID of any given username.

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?key={KEY HERE}&forUsername={USERNAME}&part=id,snippet&order=date

It works for the majority of usernames, but for some reason it chooses not to work for others.

For example, if you visit the URL: https://youtube.com/impaulsive, we can see that the username must be impaulsive.

However, if you search that through the Channel API via the forUsername attribute, it returns no results - even though it is their actual username and directs you to their official channel.

Is there a way to retrieve the Channel ID from a username?

Linda Lawton - DaImTo
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trippyyyreddd
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  • Please update your question or else add comments under my answer below if needing further help (and/or clarifications). – stvar Jan 13 '21 at 20:17

2 Answers2

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Your issue is very much recurrent with YouTube Data API (here, on SO was recently tackled several times: just issue the following SO search query: [youtube-data-api] forUsername).

Basically, you have to acknowledge two things:

  1. User names are a legacy feature of the API v3; not every channel has one attached; no channel is required to have one attached. (See this official statement from Google staff from 2013-07-11.)

  2. If you come across URLs of form https://www.youtube.com/c/NAME (or even https://www.youtube.com/NAME), then NAME is not necessarily (though it could be) the YouTube user name of an YouTube channel. NAME is a channel's custom URL, a different category. (See this official account from Google support.)

Your example -- impaulsive -- fits well with point 2 above, because it is the custom URL of the channel of which ID is UCGeBogGDZ9W3dsGx-mWQGJA, yet is not the user name of any channel:

$ python3 youtube-search.py --custom-url impaulsive
UCGeBogGDZ9W3dsGx-mWQGJA

$ python3 youtube-search.py --user-name impaulsive
youtube-search.py: error: user name "impaulsive": no associated channel found

The script youtube-search.py used above is a public (MIT licensed) Python 3 program (that I developed) implementing an algorithm that searches for custom URLs and also is querying the API for user names.

Note that youtube-search.py requires a valid API key to be passed to it as argument of the command line option --app-key or, otherwise, passed on as the environment variable YOUTUBE_DATA_APP_KEY. (Use the command line option --help for brief helping info.)

stvar
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No need to use any type of api, you can directly get the channel id using axios.

I have found this way from doing inspect of a youtube channel.

here is the code to get channel id using channel username:

to install axios on node.js

npm install axios

const axios = require('axios');

let Url = "https://www.youtube.com/@triggeredinsaan"
let channelUrl = Url.replace("/user", ""); //this will replace /user to the supported format

//supported format: https://www.youtube.com/@username

          var url = new URL(channelUrl)
 const { data } = await axios.get(url.href)


          
let Id = data.split(`<link rel="canonical" href="`)[1];

       let Result = Id.split(`">`)[0];

return console.log(ResultId); //Your channel id returns in provided format: https://www.youtube.com/channel/Id
ELEWARD
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  • While your solution would work, please note that if you make too many automated requests like this in a short time, YouTube will block your IP address for 2-3 days. You won't be blocked if you use the Data API. – Cadence Aug 17 '23 at 08:00