Developer API: Introduction
Getting Started
First, you must have a developer ID. If you do not have one, you can request one by creating a developer profile. As a sneak preview of the ease-of-use of the API, request the following URL in your web browser to request your own user profile:
http://www.youtube.com/api2_rest?method=youtube.users.get_profile&dev_id=YOUR_DEV_ID&user=YOUTUBE_USER_NAME
You should see results like the following:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ut_response status="ok"> <user_profile> <first_name>YouTube</first_name> <last_name>User</last_name> <about_me>YouTube rocks!!</about_me> <age>30</age> <video_upload_count>7</video_upload_count> .... and more .... </user_profile> </ut_response> To maintain backward-compatibility, we have retained the older XML-based API. The older documentation can be found here. All API calls return an XML document. Successful API calls return an XML document of the following form:
<ut_response status="ok">
... response XML document ... <ut_response> Failed API calls return an XML document as follows:
<ut_response status="fail">
API Call Interfaces
<error> <code>7</code> <description>Missing dev_id parameter.</description> </error> </ut_response> The code element provides the machine-friendly error code that your application can use to determine the error type and handle it appropriately. The description element provides you with a human-readable description of the error. |