Reader Beware

For some motivation and preliminary reading, you might find my original exploratory post on YouTube’s Reporting API helpful. In this particular post, I just want to cover some additional technical details that I’m more aware of after having covered Google’s Client API and YouTube’s Data API.

Nothing Much To It!

Unlike YouTube’s Data API, there is very little to learn about the Reporting API. This simplicity is intentional: the API is intended only for (i) listing what types of reports YouTube provides, (ii) listing which jobs you currently have running (i.e., which reports do you currently have YouTube generating for you on the daily), (iii) listing the reports associated with each job (essentially a list of URLs associated with the daily reports), and (iv) creating new jobs.

Importantly, the Reporting API is not meant to be an interactive querying tool. Such a use case is why you might turn to YouTube’s Analytics API. The Reporting API is basically meant to tell YouTube, “I want all the data everyday.” YouTube says, “Ok, we’ll definitely give you a shitload, but not quite the full fuckload.” And you say, “Yea, whatever – as much as possible. Everyday.”

Then, everyday, you check in on YouTube: “Got my shit?”

You might one day realize that you don’t need some of the reports, or that there is one that you have not been getting. Again, you use the Reporting API to correct this.

So when do you actually use the Analytics API? YouTube might tell you, “Whenever you need to do a quick, targeted query.” Indeed, the Analytics API allows for some targeting and it is interactive, but here’s the thing: if you have the Reporting API giving you all the data, everyday, and you are warehousing that data (say, in Amazon Redshift), then you can just target queries to your heart’s desire in R, Python, or whatever your favorite programming environment is at the time.

Quick Recap

Here is how to set everything up.

from oauth2client.client import flow_from_clientsecrets
from oauth2client.tools import run_flow
from oauth2client.file import Storage
from apiclient.discovery import build
import httplib2

SCOPE = 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/yt-analytics.readonly'
CLIENT_SECRETS_FILE = "path/to/client_secrets.json" 
CREDENTIALS_FILE = 'path/to/name-of-OAuth2-file-if-you-made-one.json' # e.g., test-oauth2.json
SERVICE_NAME = "youtubereporting"
VERSION = 'v1'

flow = flow_from_clientsecrets(CLIENT_SECRETS_FILE, scope=SCOPE, message=' f off ')
storage = Storage(CREDENTIALS_FILE) 
credentials = storage.get()   # Returns None if the file doesn't exist
if credentials is None or credentials.invalid:
    credentials = run_flow(flow, storage)
    
report = build(SERVICE_NAME,  VERSION,  http=credentials.authorize(httplib2.Http()))

Jobs

The jobs resource of the Reporting API is your way of telling YouTube what reports you want too see at your doorstep every morning.

The jobs resource primarily supports 4 methods:

• You can tell YouTube, “Hey, I want this other report too,” with the create method
• You can say, “Ya know what? I don’t want that report anymore,” with the delete method
• If you know the secret password (the jobId), you can use the get method to ask, “Hey YouTube, tell me about that one job I have you doing?”
• If you don’t remember any secret passwords, you can bully YouTube into squealing with the list method

Example: List Current Jobs

# Jobs associated w/ user's channel
report.jobs().list().execute()

# Jobs associated w/ content owner
report.jobs().list(onBehalfOfContentOwner='yourContentOwnerId')

Each job that is listed has the following properties:

• createTime (YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ): the time at which the job was created
  • time in ISO 8601 format
  • specifically, this means that the timezone for createTime is Universal Time (UT)
• id: the job ID
• name: the name given to the job, e.g., ‘User activity’
• reportId: YouTube id for the report associated with the job, e.g., content_owner_basic_a3

If you have more jobs than YouTube is willing to show you at once, it will return another response property called nextPageToken. If this is the case, you will need to issue another command to see more of your jobs:

nextPage = previousResponse['nextPageToken']
report.jobs().list(onBehalfOfContentOwner='yourContentOwnerId', pageToken=nextPage)

List Reports Generated by a Specific Job

Here we list the reports on behalf of a content owner for jobId created after on or after 2017-09-21.

report.jobs().reports().list(
    jobId=jobId, 
    onBehalfOfContentOwner=contentOwnerId, 
    createdAfter='2017-09-21T00:00:00Z'
).execute()

You should see that each report in the response has several properties, including:

• id: unique report ID
• jobId: id of the job that generated the report
• startTime, endTime: the data coverage period
  • days are always bucketed in Pacific Time, so the timestamp will vary between Pacific Daylight Time (PDT = UT-7, e.g., YYYY-MM-DDT07:00:00Z) and Pacific Standard Time (PST = UT-8, e.g., YYYY-MM-DDT08:00:00Z) throughout the year
• createTime (YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.xxxxxZ): the time at which the report was created
  • time in ISO 8601 format
  • specifically, this means that the timezone for createTime is Universal Time (UT)
• jobExpireTime: the time at which the job is set to expire (or has expired)
  • most jobs run indefinitely and will not have this property
• downloadUrl: the URL at which you can download the report using the .get method

Retrieve a Report

from apiclient.http import MediaIoBaseDownload
from io import FileIO

response = report.jobs().reports().list(
    jobId = jobId, 
    onBehalfOfContentOwner = contentOwnerId,
    startTimeAtOrAfter = '2017-09-12T00:00:00Z'
).execute()

for entry in response['reports']:
    request = report.media().download(resourceName="csv")
    request.uri = entry['downloadUrl']
    dataDate = entry['startTime'][0:10]
    createDate = entry['createTime'][0:10]
    reportName = 'report-' + dataDate + '-as-on-' + createDate + '.csv' 
    print('Downloading the', dataDate, 'Report (created on,', createDate, ')')

    # Stream/download the report in a single request. 
    chunksize = 1e8   # you can put -1, but I find using a number like this shows you more updates
    fh = FileIO(reportName, mode='wb')
    downloader = MediaIoBaseDownload(fh, request, chunksize=chunksize)
    done = False 
    while done is False: 
        status, done = downloader.next_chunk() 
        if status: 
            print("Download %d%%." % int(status.progress() * 100))
    print("Download Complete!")

Not Getting Enough Data?

The Reporting API gives you access to a lot of reports. You might want to make sure you’re getting everything you want.

# List all reports available to you as a channel owner
report.reportTypes().list().execute()

# List all reports available to you acting on behalf of a content owner
report.reportTypes().list(onBehalfOfContentOwner=contentOwnerId).execute()

Create a New Job on Behalf of a Content Owner

To create a new job, we must (i) know the reportId of the report we’d like see generated daily, (ii) name the job (so we don’t forget what it is), and (iii) put these (key,value) pairs into a dictionary that we pass to the body parameters of the create method.

The create method accepts one optional parameter: onBehalfOfContentOwner. If this parameter is not set, then YouTube assumes you want the job done for the YouTube channel associated with your verified/authenticated Google account. However, if you are or work for some media company that owns a bunch of channels, you might want the report to cover all of those channels at once!

contentOwnerId = 'topSecretStringOfLettersAndNumbers!'
reportId = 'content_owner_basic_a3'
reportName = 'User Activity'
report.jobs().create(
    body = {'reportTypeId': reportId, 'name': reportName},
    onBehalfOfContentOwner=contentOwnerId
    ).execute()

Oops! Did you get a 403 Error? Here’s the error I get from Python:

HttpError: <HttpError 403 when requesting ‘ht​tps://youtubereporting.googleapis.com/v1/jobs?onBehalfOfContentOwner=topSecretStringOfLettersAndNumbers!=json returned “The caller does not have permission”>

From the Reporting API documentation:

Forbidden (403) The request attempted to create a job for a system-managed report. YouTube will automatically generate system-managed reports, and content owners will not be able to modify or delete jobs that create those reports.