How to Get YouTube Channel ID using YouTube API in PHP

In this tutorial, we’ll walk through a simple PHP code snippet that enables you to fetch the YouTube channel ID associated with a specific video ID using the YouTube Data API. This can be useful, for instance, if you’re building an application that requires information about the channel associated with a particular video.

YouTube Channel ID Finder Demo

Requirements

  • Basic Knowledge of PHP & cURL
  • PHP Environment
  • ID of any YouTube video associated with the channel you want to find the ID for.
  • YouTube API Key

Here is how you can create YouTube API Key.

Why we need video_id to find youtube channel id?

In the YouTube Data API, the association between a video and its corresponding channel is established by retrieving the video details, which include the channelId in the API response. Therefore, to fetch the channel ID using the API, you need to provide the video ID for which you want to get the associated channel information. Check the following screenshot of the data, along with channel id, of a video returned by YouTube API.

Steps to get YouTube Channel ID with YouTube Data API

Now, if you have your YouTube Data API key & video id ready, then we can move on to start writing our PHP code to call YouTube API to fetch the video data so that we can extract the channel id from the data returned as show in the above screenshot.

1. Setting up Authentication

// Build Authentication
$YOUTUBE_API_KEY = "Your_YouTube_API_Key";
$youtube_api_url = 'https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos';
$youtube_video_id = "Your_YouTube_Video_ID";

In this section, you need to replace “Your_YouTube_API_Key” with your actual YouTube Data API key and “Your_YouTube_Video_ID” with the video ID for which you want to retrieve the channel information.

2. Building Query Parameters

// Build Query and its Parameters
$params = [
    'part' => 'snippet',
    'id' => $youtube_video_id,
    'key' => $YOUTUBE_API_KEY,
];
$url = $youtube_api_url . '?' . http_build_query($params);

This part constructs the query parameters required for the YouTube Data API request. The part parameter specifies the type of data you want, and here we are requesting the ‘snippet‘ data, and ‘key‘ is your YouTube Data API key.

3. Making the cURL Request

// Build the cURL structure & run it
$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$response = curl_exec($ch);

Here, cURL (Client URL Library) is used to make an HTTP request to the YouTube Data API with the constructed URL. The response is stored in the $response variable.

4. Handling the API Response

// Handle the cURL call's response by Youtube API
if ($response === false) {
    $output = 'Error: ' . curl_error($ch);
} else {
    $http_code = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);

    if ($http_code !== 200) {
        $output = 'Error: Unexpected HTTP response code - ' . $http_code;
    } else {
        $video_data = json_decode($response, true);
        $video = $video_data['items'][0];

        if (empty($video)) {
            $output = 'No details found.';
        } else {
            $channelId = $video['snippet']['channelId'];
            echo "Channel ID: " . $channelId;
        }
    }
}

This section checks the HTTP response code. If it’s not 200 (OK), an error is displayed. If the response is successful, the JSON data is decoded, and the channel ID is extracted from the API response.

5. Closing the cURL Session

curl_close($ch);

Finally, the cURL session is closed to free up resources.

Complete Code: YouTube Channel ID Finder

<?php

    // Build Authentication
    $YOUTUBE_API_KEY = "Your_YouTube_API_Key";
    $youtube_api_url = 'https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos';
    $youtube_video_id = "Your_YouTube_Video_ID";

    //Build Query and its Parameters
    $params = [
        'part' => 'snippet',
        'id' => $youtube_video_id,
        'maxResults' => 1, // Adjust as needed
        'key' => $YOUTUBE_API_KEY,
    ];
    $url = $youtube_api_url . '?' . http_build_query($params);

    // Build the cURL structure & run it
    $ch = curl_init($url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    $response = curl_exec($ch);

    // Handle the cURL call's response by Youtube API
    if ($response === false) {
        $output = 'Error: ' . curl_error($ch);
    }
    else {
        /* Uncomment to print the response returned by youtube api
        * echo "<pre>";
        * print_r(json_decode($response, true));
        * echo "</pre>";
        */
        $http_code = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);

        // 200 means our api call was successfull
        if ($http_code !== 200) {
            $output = 'Error: Unexpected HTTP response code - ' . $http_code;
        } else {
            $video_data = json_decode($response, true);
            $video = array();
            $video = $video_data['items'][0];
            if (empty($video)) {
                $output = 'No details found.';
                // Handle the case where no videos are returned
            } else {
                $channelId = $video['snippet']['channelId'];
                echo "Channel ID: " . $channelId;
            }
        }
    }
            
    curl_close($ch);
?>

How to Find Any YouTube Channel ID without API

Method 1: From Your YouTube Channel Account Backend

Here are the steps to find your YouTube channel ID or user ID:

  1. Make sure you are logged in to your YouTube channel and not your personal YouTube account.
  2. Open YouTube and switch to your YouTube channel.
  3. Click on your profile image in the top right corner.
  4. Click on Settings.
  5. Click on View Advanced settings.
  6. Copy the Channel ID or User ID.
  7. Alternatively, you can directly copy your User ID or Channel ID by going to Advanced settings in the browser.

Method 2: Finding YouTube Channel ID Using Browser

  1. Open YouTube in the browser.
  2. Go to the YouTube channel.
  3. Navigate to the About tab.
  4. Click on the Share icon below Stats.
  5. Click on Share channel.
  6. Click on Copy channel ID.

Conclusion

This PHP code provides a simple way to fetch the YouTube channel ID using the YouTube Data API. It’s essential to ensure that you have a valid API key and handle errors appropriately in a production environment. This tutorial should give you a foundation to integrate YouTube Data API requests into your PHP applications.

Check YouTube Data API official documentation to learn more.

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