Get a YouTube channel uploaded video list by publish date

Question

I am aware of similar questions being asked before, but not this exact one, so please bear with me...

I want to reproduce a channel's uploaded videos list as they appear on YouTube's web page (broken into pages and sorted by publish date).

To do this, I am trying to get a list of VideoIDs from a YouTube channel that's sorted by publish date (by YouTube, not my code since there could be 1000's of videos in a playlist and YouTube limits to 50 results per query which can add up when I only want to show the user the first 25 entries).

Initially, I was using this YouTube Data API v3 Search query:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/search?key=[APIKey]&channelId=[ChannelID]&part=snippet,id&order=date&type=video&maxResults=25

However, as some of the previous posts on stackoverflow mentioned (YouTube API v3 Search not returning all videos), this method does not guarantee to return all videos and indeed, some videos are missing from the result, making use of this query problematic.

I then saw this google video in some of the posts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjUlmco7v2M

In the video, it is explained that you must first get the 'uploads' playlist for a channel (I'm also grabbing the channel's title and thumbnail in this query), which I do using:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?key=[APIKEY]&part=snippet,contentDetails&id=[ChannelID]

And once I have the 'uploads' playlist ID, I query:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems?key=[APIKey]&playlistId=[PlaylistID]&part=snippet,id&order=date&type=video&maxResults=25

However, the returned entries are not sorted by the publish date and according to the documentation (https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/playlistItems/list), there is no optional "order" parameter associated with this query.

With all these issues in mind, how do I get the first 25 entries of the 'uploads' playlist sorted by publish date without downloading the entire playlist so I can faithfully recreate how the YouTube website is listing videos.

@abielita This URL (remember to use a valid APIKEY) shows a channel with the upload video playlist is not sorted by publish date googleapis.com/youtube/v3/… — bLight

Mauricio Arias Olave Mauricio Arias Olave · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-24T18:04:57

After making some tests and thanks to this answer (and the next answers too) I was able to retrieve the information you need using the YouTube Data API v3 and here is how I made it:

First, in your question you're using the "search" API - since I don't know which criteria you're using in the search request, I omitted it for get direct to get the "upload" playlist id from a given channel_id.

Using the channel_id = UCT2rZIAL-zNqeK1OmLLUa6g (which belongs to "Microsoft HoloLens"), I use the "channels" API for retrieve the uploads playlist id.

Here is the URL request for retrieve the "upload" playlist id from the channel_id previously mentioned:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=id%2Csnippet%2CcontentDetails&fields=items(contentDetails%2FrelatedPlaylists%2Fuploads%2Csnippet%2Flocalized)&id=UCT2rZIAL-zNqeK1OmLLUa6g&key=<YOUR_API_KEY>

Explanation:

part: set the snippet and contentDetails parts for retrieve the following:
fields: from the snippet part: (localized, description and title) and from the contentDetails part: (relatedPlayLists and uploads).
id: channel_id used in this request.

Here are the results from this request:

{
 "items": [
  {
   "snippet": {
    "localized": {
     "title": "Microsoft HoloLens",
     "description": "The official YouTube channel of Microsoft HoloLens. Transform your world with holograms. Visit HoloLens.com for more info."
    }
   },
   "contentDetails": {
    "relatedPlaylists": {
     "uploads": "UUT2rZIAL-zNqeK1OmLLUa6g"
    }
   }
  }
 ]
}

Check the value of the uploads property in the contentDetails section. This value will be used in the next API request.

You can also check these results in the Google API Explorer demo I prepared for make this request.

Once retrieved the uploads value (as specified in previous lines), now it's time to use the "playlistItems" API for build the following URL:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems?part=snippet%2CcontentDetails&playlistId=UUT2rZIAL-zNqeK1OmLLUa6g&fields=items(contentDetails(videoId%2CvideoPublishedAt)%2Csnippet%2Ftitle%2Cstatus)&maxResults=25&key=<YOUR_API_KEY>

Explanation:

part: set the snippet and contentDetails parts for retrieve the following:
fields: from the snippet part: (title and status) and from the contentDetails part: (videoId and videoPublishedAt).
playlistId: is the playlistId used in this request - (that is, the uploads value).
maxResults: set to 25.

Here are the results from this request:

{
 "items": [
  {
   "snippet": {
    "title": "Microsoft Windows Mixed Reality update | October 2018"
   },
   "contentDetails": {
    "videoId": "00vnln25HBg",
    "videoPublishedAt": "2019-01-04T17:43:47.000Z"
   }
  },
  {
   "snippet": {
    "title": "How to use Spectator View for mobile devices"
   },
   "contentDetails": {
    "videoId": "3fXlPw_FGLg",
    "videoPublishedAt": "2018-10-15T17:13:42.000Z"
   }
  },
  {
   "snippet": {
    "title": "Microsoft HoloLens: Visualizing the next mission to Mars."
   },
   "contentDetails": {
    "videoId": "XVBbJ4EtAQY",
    "videoPublishedAt": "2018-07-02T16:30:26.000Z"
   }
  },
  {
   "snippet": {
    "title": "Microsoft HoloLens: Making mixed reality plug and play."
   },
   "contentDetails": {
    "videoId": "QwXcSekZKWE",
    "videoPublishedAt": "2018-06-25T23:25:55.000Z"
   }
  },
  {
   "snippet": {
    "title": "Microsoft HoloLens | Windows Mixed Reality HMD Exerciser"
   },
   "contentDetails": {
    "videoId": "RU3OMjq_Yic",
    "videoPublishedAt": "2018-05-14T16:58:43.000Z"
   }
  }
 ]
}

I check the order of the items and they are in sorted by videoPublishedAt value (new to old).

You can also check these results in the try-it funcionality found in the YouTube Data API v3 - official documentation.¹

¹ For this case, I was unable to use the Google API Explorer (as I used in the first request) because I always got a "backend Error".

{
 "error": {
  "errors": [
   {
    "domain": "global",
    "reason": "backendError",
    "message": "Backend Error"
   }
  ],
  "code": 500,
  "message": "Backend Error"
 }
}

I think this is because the Google API explorer is outdated.

If anyone want to check it out, here is the demo.

Get a YouTube channel uploaded video list by publish date

2 Answers