YouTube Data API v3 - playlistItems returning playlistNotFound

Question

I've followed the instructions in this Google video and elsewhere to:

connect to the v3 API using a static API key
get the playlist ID for uploads for a channel, using the legacy channel ID (e.g. "GoogleDevelopers")
use the playlistItems endpoint for that playlist to retrieve the list of videos uploaded to that YouTube account.

The first two stages work and I'm able to get the channel/playlist ID, but playlistItems is returning playlistNotFound every time (I've tested it with several different YouTube accounts.)

I've been trying to carefully check for typos - I can't spot anything wrong with the requests.

Any ideas, or can anyone reproduce the problem?

Example API call (using the GoogleDevelopers channel as shown in their video) - you'll need to generate your own API key to test this:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?key=[myAPIkey]&forUsername=GoogleDevelopers&part=id

Response:

{
 "kind": "youtube#channelListResponse",
 "etag": "\"IHLB7Mi__JPvvG2zLQWAg8l36UU/9Uu_LJKSiIBlJOBZoZLkKcjhUUE\"",
 "pageInfo": {
  "totalResults": 1,
  "resultsPerPage": 5
 },
 "items": [
  {
   "kind": "youtube#channel",
   "etag": "\"IHLB7Mi__JPvvG2zLQWAg8l36UU/JgZIwrlCnsd1wzjssCxaCFp8mRU\"",
   "id": "UC_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw"
  }
 ]
}

Attempting to get the first video in the playlist:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems?part=snippet&maxResults=1&key=[myAPIkey]&playlistId=UC_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw

{
 "error": {
  "errors": [
   {
    "domain": "youtube.playlistItem",
    "reason": "playlistNotFound",
    "message": "Not Found",
    "locationType": "parameter",
    "location": "playlistId"
   }
  ],
  "code": 404,
  "message": "Not Found"
 }
}

Note: I generated a server key, because this is going to run on a server. But I'm testing in a browser (with the IP addresses whitelisted.) This shouldn't cause any issues should it? (no auth errors so far.)

Hey @William, even im facing this same issue. Were you able to resolve? — Adithya
@Adithya no - what I ended up doing was using the RSS feed: youtube.com/feeds/… – I did manage to get the v3 data API working to retrieve details of a specific video though, in the form: googleapis.com/youtube/v3/… — William Turrell

Alex B Alex B · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-30T13:27:38

William, what you've used as a playlist id is a channel id, to get a list of playlists with ids you need to add contentDetails to part parameter.

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=contentDetails&maxResults=50&forUsername=GoogleDevelopers&key=<APIKEY>

Response:

{
  kind: "youtube#channelListResponse",
  etag: ""iDqJ1j7zKs4x3o3ZsFlBOwgWAHU/rGUGLTaUoy_huV1Qfc0wvulpr7M"",
  pageInfo: {
    totalResults: 1,
    resultsPerPage: 50
  },
  items: [
    {
      kind: "youtube#channel",
      etag: ""iDqJ1j7zKs4x3o3ZsFlBOwgWAHU/Il2dF5SRdky6_tqanN3hNuDyfxc"",
      id: "UC_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw",
      contentDetails: {
        relatedPlaylists: {
          uploads: "UU_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw"
        },
      googlePlusUserId: "111395306401981598462"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Then use "UU_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw" as an uploads playlist so next call will look like that:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems?part=contentDetails&maxResults=1&playlistId=UU_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw&key=<APIKEY>

Response:

{
  kind: "youtube#playlistItemListResponse",
  etag: ""iDqJ1j7zKs4x3o3ZsFlBOwgWAHU/AqAMzBB7CuVjpCKtQDHbbIvjtMU"",
  nextPageToken: "CAEQAA",
  pageInfo: {
    totalResults: 3761,
    resultsPerPage: 1
  },
  items: [{
    kind: "youtube#playlistItem",
    etag: ""iDqJ1j7zKs4x3o3ZsFlBOwgWAHU/qjqde7mm3USo4TmUrxDN8KdbyaQ"",
    id: "UUj6hVp42BfAXGn9SkmnI_HudylmOycmdp",
    contentDetails: {
      videoId: "tjmRUgUca1g"
    }
  }]
}

YouTube Data API v3 - playlistItems returning playlistNotFound

1 Answers