I'm developing for a web app that needs to retrieve the last 10 videos of a user(channel).
First approach
Was to use the search endpoint with param 'forMine' ordering by date, but then I figured that maybe that param could retrieve videos uploaded by the user in a diferent channel or whatever...
First result with channel ID and date - 1st Aproach
Second approach
Was to use the search endpoint with param 'channelId' ordering by date, but then I realized that descriptions were incomplete and most importantly there were some videos missing comparing with first aproach, even if the missing videos belonged to same channel (as showed in pics links)
First resutl with channel ID and date - 2nd Aproach
So, then I googled to find some solution and found other way.
Third approach
Was to use the playlistItem endpoint as I found in Google, and seemed ok (I supposed) because it returned same videos that first aproach and consumed less quota but this method left me with doubts as I didn't knew if the videos would be the latest or maybe they would be sorted by position in the playlist and couldn't be trusted to be the most recent
That said, what would be the correct way to get the N most recent videos from a channel, please?
Regardless of the quota consumption (the less quota the better, of course, but an accurate result is essential)
I'm so confussed with the API response...
Thank you so much!
-- EDITED: NEW APPROACH AND FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS --
Fourth approach
Was to use activities endpoint as was stated by #stvar in his answer. I found that this way, as on second approach, there were some videos missing comparing with first and third approaches, and it was required to retrieve everything without 'maxResults' param because there were activities not related to video upload, making mandatory to perform pagination and a self filtering by type 'upload' after retrieving response in order to get N videos (or be confident in getting N videos uploaded in first 50 retrieved items)
Self Investigations
Further investigations and tests bringed me response to the issue of 'missing videos' of some approaches.
The status of that missing videos were 'unlisted', so they were videos uploaded to the channel, property of the channel, uploaded by user of the channel... but not retrieved by some methods that seemed to retrieve only 'public' videos not 'unlisted' (hidden) nor 'private'.
NOTE: I did my test with Google API PHP Client Library, this behaviour seems not to be on 'Try this API' as it returns only 'public' items, so be careful on trust in 'Try this API' results as it seems to use some hidden filters or something...
Also I tested the channel upload playlist to verify that the order can not be changed and has a LIFO sorting
CONCLUSIONS
At this point, my self conclusion is that there is not a proper way to solve this but quite ways to do it in depend of requisites of status and amount of free quota
Search endpoint seems to work all right, if you have a good amount of unused quota (100 each call) that is the direct way and easiest one as you can sort it and filtering as needed by a bunch of params, taking care to use 'forMine' param if you need every uploaded video or 'channelId' if you need only 'listed' and 'public' ones.
PlaylistItems endpoint is a proper way if you are in a quota crisis (1 each call) as the result is sorted by recent date, taking care to do pagination and post filtering if only 'public' videos are needed till retrieve the desired amount of video ids, otherwhise you can go all the way easy.
Note that the date used to order is the upload date not the post date
(thanks to #stvar for bringing this to the attention)
Activity endpoint, also for quota crisis (1 each call), while it could be more accurate than the others if you only want public videos (it is ordered by recent 'first publish date' so not accurate 100% neither ), is for me the one that gives more work, as it retrieves activities other than 'video upload', so you can not skip pagination and post filtering to retrieve the desired amount of video ids, besides that way you only have access, as said before, to public videos (which is fine if that meets your needs).
Anyway, if you need more than 50 ids, you need to make pagination whatever the aproach you use.
Hope this help someone else and thanks so much to contributors
PS: People in charge of the YouTube API, perhaps a filter by state among some others would be interesting, Thanks!!!
You may employ the Activities.list API endpoint, queried with:
mine=true,
part=snippet,contentDetails,
fields=items(snippet(type),contentDetails(upload)), and
maxResults=50.
For to obtain your desired N uploads, you have to implement pagination. That is that you have to successively call the endpoint until you reach N result set items that have snippet.type equal with upload.
Note that you may well use channelId=CHANNEL_ID instead of mine=true, if you're interested about the most recent uploads of a channel identified by its ID CHANNEL_ID rather than your own channel.
According to the docs, you'll get from this endpoint a result set made of Activities resource items that will contain the following info:
contentDetails.upload (object)
The upload object contains information about the uploaded video. This property is only present if the snippet.type is upload.
contentDetails.upload.videoId (string)
The ID that YouTube uses to uniquely identify the uploaded video.
The official docs state that each call to Activities.list endpoint has a quota cost of one unit.
Futhermore, upon obtaining a set of video IDs, you may invoke the Videos.list endpoint with a properly assigned id parameter, for to obtain from the endpoint all the details you need for each and every video of your interest.
Note that if you have a set of video IDs of cardinality K, since the parameter id of Videos.list endpoint can be specified as a comma-separated list of video IDs, then you may reduce the number of calls to Videos.list endpoint from K to floor(K / 50) + (K % 50 ? 1 : 0) by appropriately using the feature of id just mentioned.
According to the official docs, each call to Videos.list endpoint has also a quota cost of one unit.
Clarifications upon OP's request:
Question no. 1: The Activities.list endpoint produces only the activities specified by the Activities resource. The type property enumerates them all:
snippet.type (string)
The type of activity that the resource describes.
Valid values for this property are: channelItem, comment (not currently returned), favorite, like, playlistItem, promotedItem, recommendation, social, subscription, upload, bulletin (deprecated).
Indeed your remark is correct. For example, when getting the most recent 10 uploads, is possible that you'll have to scan a number of pages P of result sets, with P >= 2, until you reached collecting the desired 10 upload items. (Actual tests have confirmed me this to be factual.)
Question no. 2: The Activities.list endpoint produces items that are sorted by publishedAt; just replace the above fields with:
fields=items(snippet(type,publishedAt),contentDetails(upload))
and see that for yourself.
I could make here the following argument justifying the necessity that the items resulted upon the invocation of Activities.list endpoint be ordered chronologically by publishedAt (the newest first). One may note that, indeed, the official docs quoted above do not specify explicitly that ordering condition I just mentioned; but bare with me for a while:
My argument is of a pragmatic kind: if the result set of Activities.list is not ordered as mentioned, then this endpoint becomes useless. This is so, since, in this case, for one to obtain the most recent upload activity would have to fetch locally all the upload activities, for to then scan that result set for the most recent one. Being compelled to fetch all upload activities only for to obtain the newest one is pragmatically a nonsense. Therefore, by way of contradiction, the result set has to be ordered chronologically by publishedAt with the newest being the first.
Question no. 3: Indeed Search.list is not precise -- it has a fuzzy behavior. I can confirm this based on my own experience; but, unfortunately, I cannot point you to official docs (from Google or YouTube) that acknowledge and explain this behavior. As unfortunate as it is, for its users Search.list is completely opaque.
On the other hand, Activities.list is precise -- it has to be like that; if it wouldn't be precise, then that's a serious bug in the implementation (in my educated opinion).
YouTube v3 api returns significantly different LIKEs count from what is on the web version of YouTube.
Compare these:
https://monosnap.com/file/EdtDNTTGDK06zoCZ7IXkMdzn6WuyOo
https://monosnap.com/file/CcJOiKl9CBMyncHQSrPv3lkLOuqeDD
To replicate:
https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?id=jWnhFM1Ttwg&key={api_key}&maxResults=50&part=statistics (https://console.developers.google.com/apis/credentials - use your Youtube V3 key)
Any ideas?
Many thanks!
Since I don't have any documentation (from the YouTube Data API v3) that backs me up for what I going to say, I'll drop some thoughts about why the API returns different values in the "likeCount" section comparing to the YouTube actual video (saw in the main website):
I think that the differences in the results returned by the API and the results shown in the website are due to:
YouTube has its own calculations for set the values in the website, the API results and in the YouTube Analytics1.
It would be possible that those additional "likes" retrieved in the API aren't exposed to the calculations made by YouTube.
1 Extracted from this answer in the Google Support webpage:
The number of likes/dislikes in YouTube Analytics may be different than what you see on the watch page under the video. This
is a known issue and our team is working to fix this. In the meantime,
please refer to the counts on the watch page under the video for the most accurate count.
And
In rare instances, you might see more likes/dislikes than views since these metrics are adjusted by different verification
systems.
For the specific videoId you posted in your question, I did check at 2019-01-25 and the results were:
likeCount "by the API": 1341
likeCount "in the YouTube website": 851
Check again at 2019-01-28 the numbers did changed:
likeCount "by the API": 1367
likeCount "in the YouTube website": 877
You can try here the API request for get these results - (results for current day).
If you make a substract from the likeCount values gotten above, you'll get 26.
Maybe it is futile try make any mathematical operation for set the "correct" value shown in the YouTube website (using the likeCount result from the YouTube Data API), but if anyone want give it a try, I encourage you to share your answer.
My app needs to sync up with the youtube api to pull in info about any new videos. But in the PlaylistItems.list docs, I don't see any kind of "sort order" or date filtering parameters.
Is there a way to do this, or do I need to download all the playlist items every time I want to check if there is a new video?
You are going to have to download the playlist your self and then sort them locally. As you have already seen there is no way to sort them or filter the number of rows.
I think there is a really old feature request for the ability to sort. Playlist API: Add support for sorting playlist items response
What I find interesting is that they still haven't done more then set the status to "Acknowledged" and it took them two years to do that.
I guess this goes back to the question I always have who's responsibility is it to sort the data? The API or the developer? It appears that Google thinks its the developer.
I found a post on my travels that said that all play lists generated are ordered from newest first to oldest. Excepting personal playlists that the user creates which are ordered as they were added. So first added will be first in list. So [0] node is first in list response.
On the other hand, you can use the [publishedAt] property to get a time stamp.
https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/search?part=snippet&channelId=.........
[snippet] => Array ([publishedAt]=> 2010-05-12T23:57:34.000Z
Or
https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/search?order=date&part=snippet&channelId=........
However please note, this call will give EVERYTHING from the channel. Video uploads and playlists created.
As there are many call possibilities in the api, I am sure that you can find the right one that works for your needs.
Youtube data API v3:
Youtube data api v3 does not return video list in the same order as youtube.com when searching with a specific query like "old hindi songs"
Why??
There can be many reasons for this. But this doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong. It's supposed to be this way.
For example if you are logged in in youtube, youtube will order the results taking in account videos you watched or liked, while the data api does not have access to this info. Also it may filter the results based on your region, while the api will filter by region only if specifically told so.
Try running your browser in incognito, don't log in into youtube, and perform from there a youtube search. The results should 90% match those received from api v3 if of course your request to the api has the order parameter set to relevance.
I'm trying to use Google Places API for a business locator app, but am having trouble creating an exhaustive database of business.
1.The API call only returns 20 results back.
2.The "type" restriction (e.g. type=restaurant) does not pick up all businesses by type in a given zip. I could use "keyword" but not all restaurants have restaurant in their name, and not all spas have "spa" in their name.
3. Each call produces the same set of results from day to day, and with only 20 returns per call, how am I to get a more exhaustive database of businesses?
I can try to get around the above three constraints by looping through a very well degraded search of businesses: say by zip code, some list of keywords, category type. But I still won't get close to picking up the 50 million or so businesses in google places.
In fact, even when I make a call for restaurants and bars in my own neighborhood, I don't pick up popular places down the block from me.
How is the API usable for an app that locates places then?
Any suggestions on how to create a more exhaustive search?
Thanks,
Nad
I'm not able to answer your question regarding Google Places API.
But for your requirements ('business locator app', 'I don't pick up popular places down the block from me') I suggest you try Yelp Search API:
Yelp's API program enables you to access trusted Yelp information in real time, such as business listing info, overall business ratings and review counts, deals and recent review excerpts.
Yelp is a popular review website with a capable API and you may test the quality of database and the devoted user base they have at Yelp homepage.
Note:
They keep some data for themselves and do not return everything in response.
The (free) dev account has a limit of 100 calls per 24 hours.
I know I'm late but maybe it helps someone these days.
By default, each Nearby Search or Text Search returns up to 20
establishment results per query; however, each search can return as
many as 60 results, split across three pages.
You need to use the field nextPageToken that you will receive on the first search to get the next page.
https://developers.google.com/places/web-service/search
An issue in stack overflow says:
There is no way to get more than 60 results in Places API. Some people
tried to file a feature request in Google issue tracker, but Google
rejected it with the following comment Unfortunately Places API is not
in a position to return more than 60 results. Besides technical
reasons (latency, among others) returning more than 60 results would
make the API be more like a database or general-purpose search engine.
We'd rather improve search quality so that users don't need to go so
far down a long list of results.
google places api more than 60 results
I faced the same difficulties that you did and decided to use the Yelp API instead. It is free, very complete and returns up to 1000 results. You should however check the terms of service before doing anything. It does not provide the website of the business (only the Yelp website link).
https://www.yelp.com/developers/documentation/v3/business_search
Other options I investigated at that time:
Foursquare ventures. (It was very expensive, and only returned up to around 100 results)
Here places API
Factual Places (I don't think this one is an API)
Sygic Travel API (Specific for touristical spots)
Planet.osm (OpenStreetMap)