Youtube Data API v3: Sort by date not working

14
votes

The sorting is not working as expected since a few hours.

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/search?order=date&part=snippet&channelId=UC_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw&key=YOUR_API_KEY

Can be tried in the API explorer (Execute without OAuth) as well.

https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer/#p/youtube/v3/youtube.search.list?part=snippet&channelId=UC_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw&order=date

date: Resources are sorted in reverse chronological order based on the date they were created.

https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/search/list

What is going wrong?

4
youtubeyoutube-apiyoutube-data-api
I can confirm I am also seeing an issue with the YouTube API, so it's not specific to your API key. For me I'm seeing videos in pretty much random order, showing videos from 5 years ago next to videos from a month ago. - bLight
Exactly, this is currently a blocker for my requirements. There must be an issue with the API. - zkcudpgs
Hopefully it will resolve itself shortly, I believe it impacts every app that uses the YouTube API which should help get YouTube's attention. - bLight
I hope so too. I can reproduce it without any changes since several hours. - zkcudpgs
I no longer think they are in random order, I believe the result is sorted by rating instead of date. Maybe YouTube is experimenting with a new sorting method and it messed up the API. - bLight

4 Answers

10
votes

In case you are looking to get the latest videos of a channel:

  • Get the channels upload playlist from Channels
  • Get the latest videos in the channels upload playlist from PlaylistItems

Alternatively, you can use the channels RSS feed:

  • https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id={ChannelId}
  • https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user={User}

This does not replace the full search sorted by date function however.

Thanks YouTube for making me work on a Sunday, all I wanted was to watch the latest videos from my favorite channels. At least I don't have to wait for a fix anymore, good luck to those less lucky!

2
votes

Reports in Google's forum were commented by a Google employee: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/2494861?msgid=2520468

YouTube is aware the search/sorting functions aren't working as expected – this is temporary and part of our efforts to better respond, review and remove graphic, violative content from YouTube. Thanks for your patience while we work through this. Will update this thread when these features are working normally again, feel free to subscribe for updates.

1
votes

Bug reports for this include:

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/128673031

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/128673552

Both have an official comment from Google:

Thank you all for bringing this up here. These specific filters have been currently disabled on both YouTube.com and through the APIs. We should have updates on this soon. Thanks again.

0
votes

Not sure how credible that is:

Just confirming that this is only temporary, and related to YouTube's efforts to better respond, review and remove graphic, violative content from YouTube. Thanks for your patience while we work through this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/b1plj5/sort_by_upload_date_not_working/eiojtjh/