How to Extract YouTube Comments Using Youtube API - Python

YouTube is the world's most popular video sharing website with millions of users posting comments on various videos every day. For different research or analytical applications, extracting the information from these comments might be a significant resource. Using Python programming, it's simple to retrieve comments using the YouTube API. In this tutorial, we'll go through how to use Python's YouTube API to retrieve YouTube comments.

Step 1: Create a Project in Google Developers Console

To use the YouTube API, you will need to create a project in Google Developers Console. Go to https://console.developers.google.com/ and create a new project. Once the project has been established, you may enable the YouTube Data API v3 by going to the API & Services dashboard and using the search field to look for "YouTube Data API v3." To activate the API for your project, click on it.

Step 2: Install the Required Libraries

To extract YouTube comments, you will need to install the following libraries:

google-auth
google-auth-oauthlib
google-auth-httplib2
google-api-python-client

You can install these libraries using the pip package manager by running the following command in your terminal:

Code

pip install google-auth google-auth-oauthlib google-auth-httplib2 google-api-python-client

Step 3: Obtain Authorization Credentials

To access the YouTube API, you will need to obtain authorization credentials. Follow the steps below to obtain the credentials:

Go to the Google Developers Console.
Select your project.
Navigate to the API & Services dashboard and select "Credentials" from the left-hand menu.
Click on "Create Credentials" and select "OAuth client ID".
Select "Desktop app" as the application type.
Give your client ID a name and click on "Create".
Download the client_secret.json file and save it to your local machine.

Step 4: Extract YouTube Comments

Now that you have completed the initial setup, you can use the following Python code to extract YouTube comments:

Code

# Python program for extracting YouTube comments using YouTube API
# import all the required libraries
import os
import google.auth
from googleapiclient.discovery import build

# Get credentials
credentials, project = google.auth.default(scopes = [' https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.force-ssl '])

# Create YouTube API client
youtube = build(' youtube ', ' v3 ', credentials = credentials)

# Set video ID
video_id = ' YOUR_VIDEO_ID '

# Call the API to get comments
comments = []
results = youtube.commentThreads().list(
    part = ' snippet ',
    videoId = video_id,
    textFormat = ' plaintext ',
    ).execute()

# Loop through each comment and append to comments list
while results:
    for item in results[' items ']:
        comment = item[' snippet '][' topLevelComment '][' snippet '][' textDisplay ']
        comments.append(comment)
        
    # Check if there are more comments and continue iterating
    if ' nextPageToken ' in results:
        results = youtube.commentThreads().list(
            part = ' snippet ',
            videoId = video_id,
            textFormat = ' plaintext ',
            pageToken = results[' nextPageToken ']
        ).execute()
    else:
        break

# Print the comments
print(" Number of comments : ", len(comments))
for i , comment in enumerate(comments):
    print(" Comment ", i+1, " : ", comment)

Output:

Number of comments: 10
Comment 1 : This is an awesome video!
Comment 2 : I learned a lot from this video. Thanks for this video!
Comment 3 : Great tutorial! Clear and concise, recommended for Learners.
Comment 4 : This is so helpful, thank you so much for posting!
Comment 5 : You make it look so easy! Thanks for sharing.
Comment 6 : Amazing content, keep it up mate!
Comment 7 : Thank you for explaining this so well. Excellent Tutorial!
Comment 8 : I love your videos very much, they're always so informative.
Comment 9 : Thanks for taking the time to create this tutorial.
Comment 10 : This is exactly what I was looking for so long time. Thanks for sharing!

The remarks above are only intended as examples and will vary depending on the video ID given in the code. Additionally, depending on the video and how many comments it has, the quantity of comments may vary.

Conclusion

In conclusion, retrieving YouTube comments with Python and the YouTube API is a simple procedure. The YouTube API offers developers a simple interface for extracting comments from a specific YouTube video. We can log in to the YouTube API and retrieve comments for a video with the aid of the Python libraries google-auth and googleapiclient. Overall, collecting YouTube comments using Python and the YouTube API is a useful tool for studying user behaviour, assessing user sentiment, and creating better products.

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