Youtube Video API: Video Request Handler in Python

Collect information about a Youtube video via YouTube Data API in Python. The code serves as a minimal example and can be extended to get information for multiple videos with a single API request, to save received information to local files (e.g. CSV file), or to request only a subset of fields (e.g. the video category).

See here for information about the YouTube Data API and how to use it (including available resources, fields and parameters), and how authorization credentials can be obtained.

• Youtube Video Categories

Setup

Install Google API Client.

pip install --upgrade google-api-python-client

In order to make requests to the Youtube Video API, you need your personal API key (authorization credentials) (e.g. 'AIzaSyD9UI3EtVM0O_CwYsZ7k8EhCBmxmLdriG4'). You can pass the key with every request via command line, or change the default value of the corresponding argument within request_info.py.

Example

Pass the id of the desired video (e.g. 0EqSXDwTq6U for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EqSXDwTq6U) and your API key via command line. The command

python request_info.py -k 'AIzaSyD9UI3EtVM0O_CwYsZ7k8EhCBmxmLdriG4' -id 0EqSXDwTq6U

results in the response

{
    "kind": "youtube#video",
    "etag": "jjcEc6gzCy35w7VOHXgfJCURXEA",
    "id": "0EqSXDwTq6U",
    "snippet": {
        "publishedAt": "2010-08-24T15:53:42Z",
        "channelId": "UCVc1qz2PalWA-ZCsnTWSioQ",
        "title": "Charlie bit my finger! ORIGINAL",
        "description": "Charlie getting bitten by he's tiny winy little brother this shall make you AWWWWW! comment oxo.",
        "thumbnails": {
            "default": {
                "url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0EqSXDwTq6U/default.jpg",
                "width": 120,
                "height": 90
            },
            "medium": {
                "url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0EqSXDwTq6U/mqdefault.jpg",
                "width": 320,
                "height": 180
            },
            "high": {
                "url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0EqSXDwTq6U/hqdefault.jpg",
                "width": 480,
                "height": 360
            }
        },
        "channelTitle": "jasminmakeup",
        "tags": [
            "charlie",
            "bit",
            "me",
            "funnybabies"
        ],
        "categoryId": "23",
        "liveBroadcastContent": "none",
        "localized": {
            "title": "Charlie bit my finger! ORIGINAL",
            "description": "Charlie getting bitten by he's tiny winy little brother this shall make you AWWWWW! comment oxo."
        }
    }
}