Youtube Analytics & Google Service Account

Question

Objectives: Implement a program (java or python) to retrieve data from videos that I published on my Youtube channel. This program will be launched daily (1:00 AM).

Solutions: To retrieve data Youtube, including the number of views per day, YouTube Analytics API is in my opinion the best solution. I use the Google Account Service ("GoogleCredential") to authenticate me:

static {
    // Build service account credential.
    try {

        // Create a listener for automatic refresh OAuthAccessToken
        List<CredentialRefreshListener> list = new ArrayList<CredentialRefreshListener>();
        list.add(new CredentialRefreshListener() {

            public void onTokenResponse(Credential credential,
                    TokenResponse tokenResponse) throws IOException {
                System.out.println(tokenResponse.toPrettyString());

            }

            public void onTokenErrorResponse(Credential credential,
                    TokenErrorResponse tokenErrorResponse)
                    throws IOException {
                System.err.println("Error: "
                        + tokenErrorResponse.toPrettyString());
            }
        });

        // Create a GoogleCredential for authenticate with ServiceAccount
        // service
        credential = new GoogleCredential.Builder()
                .setTransport(HTTP_TRANSPORT)
                .setJsonFactory(JSON_FACTORY)
                .setServiceAccountId(SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL)
                .setServiceAccountScopes(SCOPES)
                .setClock(Clock.SYSTEM)
                .setServiceAccountPrivateKeyFromP12File(
                        new File("key.p12"))
                .setRefreshListeners(list).build();

        credential.refreshToken();

    } catch (GeneralSecurityException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

And I execute Youtube Analytics query:

YoutubeAnalytics youtubeAnalytics = new YoutubeAnalytics.Builder(HTTP_TRANSPORT, JSON_FACTORY, credential)
        .setApplicationName("Test-YouTube-Analytics/1.0").build();

    // Create request
    credential.refreshToken();
    YoutubeAnalyticsRequest<?> request = youtubeAnalytics.reports()
            .query("channel==" + channelId, "2012-10-01", "2012-12-01", "views")
            .setAlt("json")
            .setKey(API_KEY)
            .setDimensions("month")
            .setPrettyPrint(true);
    System.out.println(request.buildHttpRequest().getUrl().toString());
    ResultTable first = (ResultTable) request.execute();
}

But I get the following error:

com.google.api.client.googleapis.json.GoogleJsonResponseException: 500 Internal Server Error
{
  "code" : 500,
  "errors" : [ {
    "domain" : "global",
    "message" : "Unknown error occurred on the server.",
    "reason" : "internalError"
  } ],
  "message" : "Unknown error occurred on the server."
}

Thanks for your insight!

Answer 1

You can't use a service account when making a YouTube Analytics API request. You need to use an account that is either the owner of the YouTube channel or a content owner associated with the channel, and I don't believe a service account can be either of those things. Please go through the OAuth 2 flow once while signed in as the Google Account that owns the YouTube channel, and the saved OAuth 2 refresh token could then be used repeatedly in the future to get fresh access tokens which can be used to run reports.

Could you please resolve that issue and then try running your report again?