How to Retrieve YouTube Channel and Video Details Using Python and YouTube Data API

In this blog, we’ll explore how to use Python to fetch YouTube channel details and video information using the YouTube Data API. This guide will help you programmatically access data like channel names, descriptions, subscriber counts, video titles, views, likes, and comments using Python’s requests library.

We will focus on fetching data for two popular YouTube channels: Cristiano Ronaldo’s official channel (@cristiano) and MrBeast’s channel. Let’s go step-by-step on how to achieve this.

Step 1: Setting Up the Environment

Before starting, make sure you have Python installed on your machine. You’ll also need an API key from the Google Cloud Platform. You can get it by enabling the YouTube Data API v3 from the Google Developer Console.

Step 2: Install the Required Python Library

We’ll use Python’s requests library to make HTTP requests to the YouTube Data API. Install it using pip if you haven’t already:

pip install requests

Part 1: Retrieving YouTube Channel Details

To fetch channel details, we use the channels endpoint of the YouTube Data API. Here is a Python function to retrieve channel details such as the channel name, description, subscriber count, profile image, and more:

import requests

def get_channel_details(channel_ids, api_key):
    channel_data = []
    for channel_id in channel_ids:
        url = f"https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=snippet,statistics&id={channel_id}&key={api_key}"
        response = requests.get(url)
        data = response.json()
        if 'items' in data and len(data['items']) > 0:
            item = data['items'][0]
            snippet = item['snippet']
            stats = item['statistics']
            channel_data.append({
                'Channel Name': snippet['title'],
                'Channel Description': snippet['description'],
                'Custom URL': snippet.get('customUrl', 'N/A'),
                'Profile Image': snippet['thumbnails']['high']['url'],
                'Subscribers': int(stats.get('subscriberCount', 0)),
                'Channel Thumbnail': snippet['thumbnails']['high']['url']
            })
    return channel_data

# Example usage
channel_ids = ["UCtxD0x6AuNNqdXO9Wp5GHew", "UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA"]  # MrBeast and Cristiano Ronaldo channels
api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'  # Replace with your API key
channel_details = get_channel_details(channel_ids, api_key)
print(channel_details)

Explanation:

API Key: Replace 'YOUR_API_KEY' with your actual API key.
Channel IDs: The channel_ids list contains two channel IDs: Cristiano Ronaldo’s official channel and MrBeast’s channel.
Function get_channel_details:
- It loops through the channel_ids list and constructs a URL to call the YouTube Data API’s channels endpoint.
- It retrieves the snippet and statistics parts of the channel information.
- Extracted data includes Channel Name, Channel Description, Custom URL, Profile Image, Subscribers, and Channel Thumbnail.
Result: The function returns a list of dictionaries containing channel details, which is then printed to the console.

Part 2: Retrieving YouTube Video Details

Once we have the channel details, we can move on to retrieving the details of videos from those channels. We’ll use the search endpoint to get a list of recent videos and the videos endpoint to get statistics for each video.

Python

import requests

def get_video_details(channel_ids, api_key, max_results=10):
    video_data = []
    for channel_id in channel_ids:
        # Get the channel name
        channel_url = f"https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=snippet&id={channel_id}&key={api_key}"
        channel_response = requests.get(channel_url)
        channel_data = channel_response.json()
        channel_name = channel_data['items'][0]['snippet']['title']
        
        # Get the video details
        url = f"https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/search?part=snippet&channelId={channel_id}&order=date&maxResults={max_results}&key={api_key}"
        response = requests.get(url)
        data = response.json()
        
        for item in data.get('items', []):
            video_id = item['id'].get('videoId', 'N/A')
            if video_id != 'N/A':
                video_snippet = item['snippet']
                video_stats = get_video_statistics(video_id, api_key)
                video_data.append({
                    'Channel Name': channel_name,
                    'Video Title': video_snippet['title'],
                    'Video Description': video_snippet['description'],
                    'Video Thumbnail': video_snippet['thumbnails']['high']['url'],
                    'Video ID': video_id,
                    **video_stats
                })
    return video_data

def get_video_statistics(video_id, api_key):
    url = f"https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?part=statistics&id={video_id}&key={api_key}"
    response = requests.get(url)
    data = response.json()
    
    if 'items' in data and len(data['items']) > 0:
        stats = data['items'][0]['statistics']
        return {
            'Likes': int(stats.get('likeCount', 0)),
            'Comments': int(stats.get('commentCount', 0)),
            'Views': int(stats.get('viewCount', 0))
        }
    return {}

# Example usage
channel_ids = ["UCtxD0x6AuNNqdXO9Wp5GHew", "UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA"]  # MrBeast and Cristiano Ronaldo channels
api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'  # Replace with your API key
video_details = get_video_details(channel_ids, api_key)
print(video_details)

Enjoy!

How to Retrieve YouTube Channel and Video Details Using Python and YouTube Data API