Get all video IDs of a YouTube playlist through GET requests

Question

I'm trying to load all video IDs of a YouTube playlist and save them in an array in order to access them later.

I started with this:

$.getJSON( "https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems", {
  part : 'snippet', 
  playlistId : inputId,
  key: API_KEY
}, function(data) {
  $.each(data.items, function(i, item) {
    var itemId = item.snippet.resourceId.videoId;
    videoIds.push(itemId);
  }
);

Then I noticed only the first 5 video IDs of the input playlist have been saved in my array 'videoIds'. Apparantly, the YouTube API uses pages to limit the amount of items in a GET response. I didn't see a way to increase the amount of items per request. So instead I updated my code by using the response keys 'resultsPerPage', 'totalResults' and 'nextPageToken'. Basically, I now send one GET request for every page of the playlist:

$.getJSON("https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems", {
  part : 'snippet', 
  playlistId : inputId,
  key: API_KEY
}, function(data) {
  resultsPerPage = data.pageInfo.resultsPerPage;
  nextPageToken = data.nextPageToken;
  totalResults = data.pageInfo.totalResults;
  $.each(data.items, function(i, item) {
    var itemId = item.snippet.resourceId.videoId;
    videoIds.push(itemId);
  });

  // if playlist items don't fit on a single page
  if (resultsPerPage < totalResults) {
    for (var i = 0; i < totalResults/resultsPerPage; i++) {
      // send the request again...
      $.getJSON("https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems", {
        part: 'snippet', 
        playlistId: inputId,
        // but this time, with a pageToken
        pageToken: nextPageToken,
        key: API_KEY
      }, function(data) {
        // debug logging  
        console.log("old token:" + nextPageToken);
        console.log("new token:" + data.nextPageToken);
        // update the nextPageToken for the next iteration
        nextPageToken = data.nextPageToken;
        $.each(data.items, function(i, item) {
          var itemId = item.snippet.resourceId.videoId;
          videoIds.push(itemId);
        });
      });
    }
  }
});

My problem: the value of 'nextPageToken' never changes. This is what my console looks like after I run my code:

old token:CAUQAA script.js:62 
new token:CAoQAA script.js:63
old token:CAoQAA script.js:62
new token:CAoQAA script.js:63
old token:CAoQAA script.js:62
new token:CAoQAA script.js:63
old token:CAoQAA script.js:62
new token:CAoQAA script.js:63

Why is the value of nextPageToken in a GET response the same String as the value I used for pageToken in the correlating GET request? Is there an easier way to get all IDs of a playlist?

Look at this older post https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18804904/retrieve-all-videos-from-youtube-playlist-using-youtube-v3-api — Jmartnz, Jun 20 '18 at 13:40

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 10 '21 at 17:52

YouTube Data API's Videos.list API endpoint returns maximum 50 items per page:

maxResults (unsigned integer)

The maxResults parameter specifies the maximum number of items that should be returned in the result set.

Note: This parameter is supported for use in conjunction with the myRating parameter, but it is not supported for use in conjunction with the id parameter. Acceptable values are 1 to 50, inclusive. The default value is 5.

The way nextPageToken works is like this:

Situation:

You're trying to retrieve a list of 200 videos but YouTube can only return 50 results per pagination.

After a successful first request, YouTube gives you the first 50 videos, so only 150 left. With this first 50 lists of videos comes a nextPageToken, which you can use to retrieve the next 51-100.
So you pass this nextPageToken value to the pageToken property and perform another request, which results in YouTube Data API giving you the next 51-100 videos, so only 100 left. With this 51-100 videos comes a new nextPageToken again which will be used to retrieve the next 101-150 videos. Rinse and repeat.

This will be easier with an actual demo on how to do this so watch this tutorial.

Test it on Google API Explorer youtube.search.list.

That's how I thought it should work. In my second code example, I'm using the new nextPageToken of the response, but I'm not getting new tokens. It always returns the token for page 2 even though the video IDs of that response are of the videos of page 2 already. — hildebro, Jun 21 '18 at 13:10
To be clearer: 1st request without a pageToken returns videos 1-5 and nextPageToken 'CAoQAA'. 2nd request with pageToken 'CAoQAA' returns videos 6-10 and the same nextPageToken 'CAoQAA' as before. — hildebro, Jun 21 '18 at 13:50
you're not using the "new nextPageTokens" . check my answer. watch the video from the youtube. — ReyAnthonyRenacia, Jun 21 '18 at 14:15

Get all video IDs of a YouTube playlist through GET requests

1 Answers1