Python Youtube API v3 don't return me all the videos in particulars channels

Question

I have been trying to learn something about API so I did some calls to YT API. I have the following code:

# Import Libraries
import requests 
import pandas as pd
import time

# KEY
API_KEY = 'MY KEY'
CHANNEL_ID = 'SOME YT CHANNEL'

def get_video_details(video_id):
        # Segundo call al API
        url_video_stats = 'https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?id='+video_id+'&part=statistics&key='+API_KEY
        response_video_stats = requests.get(url_video_stats).json()

        # Recoleccion de views, likes, dislikes y comentarios de cada video
        view_count = response_video_stats['items'][0]['statistics']['viewCount']
        like_count = response_video_stats['items'][0]['statistics']['likeCount']
        comment_count = response_video_stats['items'][0]['statistics']['commentCount']
        
        return view_count, like_count, comment_count

def get_videos(df):
    # Make API call
    pageToken = ''
    while 1: # while 1 is the same as while true. It means loop forever. The only way to stop the loop is to use a break statement.
        url = 'https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/search?key='+API_KEY+'&channelId='+CHANNEL_ID+'&part=snippet,id&order=date&maxResults=50&'+pageToken
        response = requests.get(url).json()
        time.sleep(2) # Para evitar que se quede en el loop infinito, esperamos 1 segundo antes de hacer el siguiente llamado.

        # Crear el loop para extraer todos los datos de los videos
        for video in response['items']:
            if video['id']['kind'] == 'youtube#video': # Para asegurarme que el objeto sea un video y no otra cosa
                video_id = video['id']['videoId']
                video_title = video['snippet']['title']
                video_title = str(video_title).replace('&amp;', '')
                upload_date = video['snippet']['publishedAt']
                upload_date = str(upload_date).split('T')[0]
                
                view_count, like_count, comment_count = get_video_details(video_id)

                '''# Guardando los datos en el DataFrame 'df' vacio que creamos antes
                df = df.append({
                    'video_id' : video_id,
                    'video_title' : video_title,
                    'upload_date' : upload_date,
                    'view_count' : view_count,
                    'like_count' : like_count,
                    #'dislike_count' : dislike_count,
                    'comment_count' : comment_count
                    },
                    ignore_index=True
                )'''
                # Guardamos los datos en el df usando pd.concat:
                df = pd.concat([df, pd.DataFrame({
                    'video_id' : video_id,
                    'video_title' : video_title,
                    'upload_date' : upload_date,
                    'view_count' : view_count,
                    'like_count' : like_count,
                    'comment_count' : comment_count
                    },
                    index=[0]
                )])
                
        try:
            if response['nextPageToken'] != None: # Si hay una pagina siguiente, entonces seguimos con el loop
                pageToken = "pageToken=" + response['nextPageToken'] 

        except:
            break
        
    return df

# Main df
df = pd.DataFrame(columns=['video_id', 'video_title', 'upload_date', 'view_count', 'like_count', 'comment_count'])

df = get_videos(df)

And if I try, for example, this channel: UCaY_-ksFSQtTGk0y1HA_3YQ I only get 322 videos in the DF, nevertheless the channel has +1000 videos

{'kind': 'youtube#searchListResponse',
 'etag': 'JkC3s6SSNCamNNEIDoC_IcYw9dY',
 'nextPageToken': 'CDIQAA',
 'regionCode': 'AR',
 'pageInfo': {'totalResults': 1063, 'resultsPerPage': 50},
 'items': [{ ... }]}

I was doing some calls from others channels with less videos and I get all of them, but if the channel has, I don't know, 500+ videos, the built functions don't work very well like you can see...

Any idea? What am I doing wrong?

Thanks all!

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 15 '22 at 06:14

Note: Search results are constrained to a maximum of 500 videos if your request specifies a value for the channelId parameter and sets the type parameter value to video

Source: Search: list#channelId

AFAIK Search: list endpoint is bugged and always limits its results number to 500.

To consume 100 times less quota, in addition to having a working algorithm consider listing uploads playlist videos (the playlist id is the channel id with a UU as a prefix instead of UC) with PlaylistItems: list. See here for more details.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 16 '22 at 15:00

I checked the channel you mentioned (i.e. UCaY_-ksFSQtTGk0y1HA_3YQ) and I found:

Its uploaded videos - (i.e uploads playlist) contains 727 videos.
The total videos in all its playlists (excluding the uploads playlist) contains in total: 625 videos¹.

Checking your code, my suggestions are:

Use playlist:list endpoint for get all the playlist a given channel has.
Use playlistitems:list endpoint for get all videos inside a playlist - unsing the id from the playlist:list response.
Use again the playlistitems:list endpoint, but, this time, passing the uploads playlist id of the channel. You need to change the value from UCaY_-ksFSQtTGk0y1HA_3YQ` to UUaY_-ksFSQtTGk0y1HA_3YQ.

The sum of both videos found on all their playlists and their uploaded videos are 1352 videos¹ - which I assume is the number you're referring to in your question:

Quote:

And if I try, for example, this channel: UCaY_-ksFSQtTGk0y1HA_3YQ I only get 322 videos in the DF, nevertheless the channel has +1000 videos

¹ Videos up to date (16/08/2022). This number might change in the future = due to new uploads/changes in their playlists, etc.

Python Youtube API v3 don't return me all the videos in particulars channels

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