How to get user links through YouTube API?

Question

There is a section of external links at the 'About' tab of YouTube user. How to get the links through YouTube API?

For example, there are twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. links at https://www.youtube.com/user/google/about

I couldn't find anywhere in the documentation. Because the documentation and structure is kinda difficult to follow, I might miss the relevant parts of it.

Answer 1

Ferhad, I have spent some time researching this problem and as far as I can ascertain, the links are not available via the Youtube V3 API. However, like you, I'm not convinced that I've explored every option; it's just not clear in the available documentation.

I just did this test: visit the About page of a YouTube channel, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/user/Gap/about, you'll that there is section called "Links" with many URLs. I believe you'll find this on many YouTube channels. I looked at both the YouTube and Google+ APIs (thinking the links might be coming from a linked G+ account), I cannot find a way to retrieve those links via the API.

I tried using "Channels: list" with these parameters:

• part=auditDetails,brandingSettings,contentDetails,contentOwnerDetails,id,invideoPromotion,snippet,statistics,status,topicDetails
• id=UCKdDR4GsvrA3yeDhMykoiPQ
• fields=etag,eventId,items,kind,nextPageToken,pageInfo,prevPageToken,tokenPagination,visitorId

The links were nowhere in the data.

Since there was a linked Google+ account, I tried looking over there, thinking they might be shared between the two platforms. I tried using "People: get" with these parameters:

• userid=100521075388356747359
• fields=aboutMe,ageRange,birthday,braggingRights,circledByCount,cover,currentLocation,displayName,domain,emails,etag,gender,id,image,isPlusUser,kind,language,name,nickname,objectType,occupation,organizations,placesLived,plusOneCount,relationshipStatus,skills,tagline,url,urls,verified

The links weren't there. The next area of exploration would be to see if they are only available via OAuth2, but again, it's not evident from the documentation.

Sorry that this is only a partial answer but some times it's hard to prove a negative.

Answer 2

Ibrahim Ulukaya, member of Google's Developer Relations team, focusing on the YouTube API, said they're unavailable in Feb 2013: https://stackoverflow.com/a/14962220/515942

Unfortunately 'related sites' are not provided in API, even in "https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/channels#snippet.description"