YouTube API | Javascript- Upload video to a constant channel bypassing login.

Question

I'm building a web application that allows a specific user to upload videos to a YouTube account through the use of the YouTube API. The uploading of videos will be done by only one person & videos will be uploaded only to one account. If the YouTube account is already authorized by the app to manage the channel etc, how can I setup the application in such a way that the user bypasses the authentication/login screen every time he/she needs to upload a video? (That is when the user exits and re-enters application.)

While reading, a solution I stumbled upon a solution which was to use a refresh token but I don't know how to integrate it with the code I have currently. The code I'm using is the one available on the Google Developers site, link below.

https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/code_samples/javascript#upload-a-video

Please note that I've gone through & read all similar questions on this forum but none provides Javascript help/solution.

Answer 1

Normally i would say that you should use a service account which would allow you to preauthorize the access to YouTube. However the YouTube API does not support service accounts so your going to have to do it the hard way.

You will need to authenticate your application once and save the refresh token. Then you will be able to use the refresh token again later to get a new access token. You will have to watch this application refresh tokens can expire its rare but it can happen so you should have something set up that will allow you to quickly reauthenticate it and save a new refresh token.

To my knowledge it is not possible to get a refresh token with JavaScript your going to have to use a server sided language like node.js for example. This tutorial should show you how to get offline access with node js. Node.js Quickstart