Allowing Google Service Account YouTube Upload Access via API v3

Question

I want to automatically upload videos to YouTube without user involvement so I've created a service account, jumped through the hoops, all was looking great, then the upload, chunk one, is attempted and my code bombs with this Google_Exception exception:

"Failed to start the resumable upload (HTTP 401: youtube.header, Unauthorized)"

I then dug and found on the YouTube API v3 error information:

https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/errors

"This error is commonly seen if you try to use the OAuth 2.0 Service Account flow. YouTube does not support Service Accounts, and if you attempt to authenticate using a Service Account, you will get this error."

Is this correct? I cannot use a service account to upload video to YouTube automatically?

(that was a waste of a couple of days hard work!)

Answer 1

Yes, it is correct.

The way forward is to do a manual authorisation and grab the resultant 'refresh token' and then use that for any automated uploads.

Ensure to add the refresh token to the PHP Google_Client object prior to any other action.

I am now automatically uploading to YouTube.