Retrieving number of subscriptions and subscribers of specific set of users

Question

I'm trying to retrieve the number of subscriptions and subscribers of specific set of users. I'm using YouTube API for Python.

I wrote the following code for number of subscriptions. This code reads the users' IDs from a list one by one, counts number of their subscriptions and writes the ID and the number in a CSV file. But it doesn't work properly. after the few first user's it stops writing the numbers in the file, and the numbers are not all correct anyhow. I think there should be something simpler than this mess.

Thanks,I appreciate your suggestions and comments.

import os
import gdata.youtube
import gdata.youtube.service
import time


def GetUserUrl (username):

    yt_service = gdata.youtube.service.YouTubeService()
    uri = 'https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/%s/subscriptions?max-results=50&start-index=1' % username
    subscription_feed = yt_service.GetYouTubeSubscriptionFeed(uri)
    T1 = GetUserSub(subscription_feed)
    final = 0
    j = 1
    total = 0
    while j<800:
      j = j + 50
      sj = str(j)
      uri = 'https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/%s/subscriptions?max-results=50&start-index=' % username+sj
      subscription_feed = yt_service.GetYouTubeSubscriptionFeed(uri)
      T2 = GetUserSub(subscription_feed)
      total = total + T2

    final = total + T1
    usersub.writelines([str(username),',',str(final),'\n'])

def GetUserSub (subscription_feed):

  i = 0
  for entry in subscription_feed.entry:
    i = i +1
  return i

usersub = open ('usersubscribtions.csv','w')
users=[]
userlist = open("user_ids_noduplicates1.txt","r")
text1 = userlist.readlines()

for l in text1:
        users.append(l.strip().split()[0])
x = 0
while (x<len(users)):

 try:
    GetUserUrl(users[x])
    time.sleep(0.4)
    x = x+1
 except:
    usersub.writelines([str(users[x]),'\n'])
    x = x+1
    pass

usersub.close()

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 19 '13 at 07:54

If you are just trying to get the total number of subscribers, you don't need to count items in a feed - it is a supplied value in v3 of the Data API.

You just need to make a call to the Channels resource with the channelId of the user you are looking up: https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=statistics&id=UCDsO-0Yo5zpJk575nKXgMVA&key={YOUR_API_KEY}

Response:

{
 "kind": "youtube#channelListResponse",
 "etag": "\"O7gZuruiUnq-GRpzm3HckV3Vx7o/wC5OTbvm5Z2-sKAqmTfH4YDQ-Gw\"",
 "pageInfo": {
  "totalResults": 1,
  "resultsPerPage": 1
 },
 "items": [
  {
   "id": "UCDsO-0Yo5zpJk575nKXgMVA",
   "kind": "youtube#channel",
   "etag": "\"O7gZuruiUnq-GRpzm3HckV3Vx7o/xRjATA5YtH9wRO8Uq6Vq4D45vfQ\"",
   "statistics": {
    "viewCount": "80667849",
    "commentCount": "122605",
    "subscriberCount": "4716360",
    "videoCount": "163"
   }
  }
 ]
}

As you can see, the subscriberCount is included in the response.

Thanks Matt for your answer. It sounds straightforward but I didn't exactly understand how it works. I went through the documentation: https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/channels. But I didn't understand how I should set the parameters (I think I should assign the users'IDs to 'id') for https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels and make the call. — DMD, Feb 19 '13 at 12:33
Check out my answer here to see how to get a channel's id when you only have their username: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14760497/search-youtube-videos-by-author/14761305#14761305. The user's id is in this format: UCDsO-0Yo5zpJk575nKXgMVA — Matt Koskela, Feb 19 '13 at 18:15

Retrieving number of subscriptions and subscribers of specific set of users

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