Since its initial launch in 2007, the YouTube Data API has become one of Google’s most popular APIs by request volume, thanks to the awesome apps from developers like you. To help you make better integrated video experiences, you can now use the YouTube API version 3.0. The new API is easy to use thanks to rich client library support, improved tooling, reference documentation and integration with Google’s common API infrastructure. Version 3.0 only returns what you ask for and is using JSON rather than XML encoding for greater efficiency. The API introduces new core functionality including Freebase integration via topics, and universal search. If you develop social media management apps, you’ll love channel bulletin post and full subscriber list management, also new in this release. Version 3.0 of the API constitutes the API's biggest overhaul to date and we’re eager for you to try it today!
New Functionality: Topics, Universal Search, and Audience Engagement Support
Have you ever tried to search for YouTube videos only to find out that keyword search can produce ambiguous results? With the new Topics API, thanks to the power of Freebase, you can find exactly what you’re looking for by specifying Freebase topic IDs rather than search keywords.
For example, if you’re reading this post from outside of the US and would like to search for content related to football, /m/02vx4 is probably the topic ID you're after. The API's universal search feature lets you retrieve channels, playlists and videos matching the topic with just one request like this one. Find out more in our Topics API Guide.
Version 3.0 introduces better tools to engage and interact with one’s YouTube audience. Social media management apps can now help content creators communicate with their channel subscribers using buletin posts.
Efficiency, Client Libraries, Better Tooling and More!
To help you reduce your app’s bandwidth requirements version 3.0 only returns the information you ask for as specified by the “part” parameter.
While the default JSON encoding in version 3.0 is more efficient than XML in version 2.0, if parsing JSON isn’t your thing, check out the client libraries for .NET, Dart, Go, Java, JavaScript, Objective-C, PHP, Python and Ruby. The libraries use OAuth 2.0 authorization and work with the YouTube API as well as other modern Google APIs thus simplifying your application.
The familiar Google API tools such as the API console work with YouTube API version 3.0 without any extra hassles. Additionally, our API reference documentation now allows you to scroll down to the bottom of any reference page to try the API. You can also or visit the standalone API Explorer to browse a list of supported methods.
App Examples
Even though version 3.0 is still experimental, a number of exciting new apps are already using it. Let’s look at a few examples:
- Showyou, an app that makes it easy to watch the Internet, integrated the Topics API to enable users to discover related videos after tapping on topics associated with the Showyou feed.
- Argentina-based Interesante integrated the Topics API to determine the Freebase topic of videos being shared. Interesante used this to serve interest-based video recommendations.
- FanBridge, a company specializing in growing and managing one’s fan base, recently introduced channel bulletin post functionality with scheduled posts support.
- Tubular Labs, which focuses on YouTube audience development, uses subscriber list to help content creators develop a better understanding of their audiences.
- Pixability, a company specializing in YouTube marketing software, was able to quickly port their Online Video Grader to the YouTube API version 3.0 thanks to the new Python client library.
If you would like to learn more about the YouTube API version 3.0, in addition to the API documentation, the material curated in this playlist is a great place to start. Please subscribe to the YouTube for Developers' channel to keep up on the latest.
Since the most fun way to work with it is to try it, we’ve prepared a few code examples in Python and JavaScript to get you started. For a more comprehensive client-side app using the Topics API, try the Topics Explorer. You can find its source code on code.google.com.
Cheers,
-- Raul Furnică, Vladimir Vuskovic and Pepijn Crouzen, YouTube API Team
