Building on YouTube APIs in the cloud with Google Apps Script

Ikai — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 21:00:00 +0000

There’s nothing better in this world than a great pairing, like coffee and donuts or bees and honey. Today there’s a new one to add to the list: Google Apps Script now has built in support for the YouTube Data v3 and YouTube Analytics APIs. If you haven’t yet heard of Google Apps Script, you’re missing out on an easy-to-use tool for integrating and automating common tasks across many of Google’s services. With less than half a screen’s worth of code in Google Apps Script’s cloud-based editor, you can:

Dynamically update a spreadsheet containing watch-time statistics for all of your channel's videos, with all the flexibility and power of Google Sheets to sort and slice that data
Create a live dashboard or scheduled email report about your channel's performance
Handle channel management tasks such as scheduling automatic bulletins or changing the visibility of a large number of videos from private to public
Automate playlist rotation without having to maintain a server or keep a computer for the sole purpose of running a script

Google Apps Script's cloud-based environment and autocomplete functionality make it easy to just open an editor, enable the YouTube APIs, and start writing code:

For functions that require OAuth 2.0 authorization, there’s no authorization code to write and no token management to deal with. Once your script is ready, just click “Run” and Google Apps Script will present you with an authorization dialog. Once you select the channel you want to authorize, the script will have all of the permissions it needs to operate on your behalf, running in the background at scheduled intervals if you so desire.

To get started, browse to Google Drive. Click “Create” and then choose “Script”. This will open a new browser tab to the Google Apps Script editor. Name your project and click on “Resources” and select “Advanced Google Services”:

Toggle the YouTube Data API and/or YouTube Analytics API on:

Note the message that these services must be enabled in the API console. Click the link to be taken to the Google Developer Console. The link in the message will take you to a specific API project created for this specific Apps Script. Scroll down and toggle on the YouTube APIs the script will use:

Switch back to the tab containing Google Apps Script and click “OK”. You’re ready to start writing code. Type “YouTube” and hit the period key (“.”). If the APIs have been turned on correctly, you will be able to start writing code and calling functions available in the Data API or Analytics API. For instance, a short script that searches for videos about “dogs” and prints the video IDs to the Google Apps Script log would look like this:

function searchByKeyword() {
  var results = YouTube.Search.list("id,snippet", 
                   {q : "google apps script", maxResults: 25});
  
  for(var i in results.items) {
    var item = results.items[i];
    Logger.log("[%s] Title: %s", item.id.videoId, item.snippet.title);
  }
}

For more information about this update to Google Apps Script, check out the post on their official blog. To learn more about how to integrate scheduled jobs, write to spreadsheets or any of the many things Google Apps Script can do, check out the tutorials at their home at developers.google.com/apps-script. If you’re the type that prefers to learn on the go, get started with your own copy of our sample code in your Google Drive. You will still need to enable the APIs, so don’t forget to go to “Resources > Advanced Google services” for the link to the Developer Console project to turn on the APIs.

If you have any questions, feel free to find us on StackOverflow under the youtube-api and google-apps-script tags. Happy coding!

- Ikai Lan
YouTube Developer Relations

Spice up your channel with the InVideo Programming API

Ikai — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 20:53:00 +0000

If you’ve used InVideo Programming before, you know that it’s a powerful way to attract subscribers to your channel. By featuring a watermark or a hit video on all videos on your channel, you can showcase the best of what your channel has to offer. You can also add a link to your home on social networks with a custom message to drive two-way conversation with your viewers on multiple fronts.

“That’s awesome,” you might say. “I’m already using it via the YouTube.com website!” Well, great! But did you know these options are available via our v3 Data API? The API enables all kinds of interesting use cases. Some examples:

Update the message to tease your latest tweet. When users click on your link, they are taken to your Twitter page
Feature the most recent upload to any channel on YouTube
Run a channel about television? You can write a script to rotate the featured video depending on whether it is the afternoon or the evening, a weekday or a weekend! Or, rotate the featured video daily to drive more views, reshares and discussion of quality content that might not be as fresh
Build a widget on your website or mobile app that lets your subscribers vote for a video to be featured every week! The video doesn’t have to be a video from your channel - it can be any video on YouTube!

InVideo Programming options are set as part of the channels resource, passed as a parameter to youtube.channels.update() in the invideoPromotion field. For instance, to feature this recent “YouTube Developers Live” show featuring our team’s favorite moments, I would structure the invideoPromotion field in my API request’s payload body like this:

invideoPromotion": {

"items": [

{

"id": {

"type": "video",

"videoId": "lzaYch2mqlU"

"timing": {

"type": "offsetFromStart",

"offsetMs": "0",

"durationMs": "15000"

}

]

}

Other options for the type field in the id object include website and recentUpload, which correspond to InVideo Programming featuring a link, or automatically updating InVideo Programming featuring the latest video in a channel. For more information, see the documentation describing the invideoPromotion object in the channels resource.

A video featuring a watermark (top right) and InVideo Programming (bottom left)

Chances are good, though, that you’re using one of our API client libraries, which will help translate these API requests and responses into programmatic objects that you can manipulate and pass around in your code.

InVideo Programming functionality is relatively new, so if you are using an API client for a language like Java or .NET, you will need to make sure your client libraries are up-to-date before you can take advantage of these new features. Our samples are sorted by programming language on our Github page.

You can also set a channel’s watermark using the Data API’s watermarks.set() method. Watermarks are images that appear in the upper right hand corner of your videos that will link viewers to your channel on web and in the YouTube mobile apps for Android and iOS. This is usefu

InVideo Programming lets you reinforce your channel’s brand and drive viewers to other videos or social channels. The API makes it easy for your team to integrate InVideo Programming into your tools and workflow to make them more dynamic and interesting. Integrating the API into your tools and workflow only help to make your InVideo Programming more dynamic.

Happy coding!

- Ikai Lan, YouTube API team

Google Data » Ikai

Building on YouTube APIs in the cloud with Google Apps Script

Spice up your channel with the InVideo Programming API