How to Extract YouTube Comments Using Youtube API – Python

Prerequisite: YouTube API

Google provides a large set of API’s for the developer to choose from. Each and every service provided by Google has an associated API. Being one of them, YouTube Data API is very simple to use provides features like –

• Search for videos
• Handle videos like retrieve information about a video, insert a video, delete a video etc.
• Handle Subscriptions like lists all the subscriptions, insert or delete a subscription etc.

In this article, we will discuss How to Extract YouTube Comments and reply using Google YouTube API in Python.

Understand step by step implementation:-

• Retrieve YouTube Video Results
  • Here we will use commentThreads, list, execute method, it will give the list of comment and replies
  • Inside list method, pass snippet and replies in part property and in videoId property pass video id of video URL

Python3

# creating youtube resource object
youtube = build('youtube','v3',
                developerKey="Enter API Key")

# retrieve youtube video results
video_response=youtube.commentThreads().list(
  part='snippet,replies',
  videoId="Enter Video ID"
).execute()

• Iterate through each Video Response and fetch comments and replies
  • The data comes in dictionary format, each comment data has reply count number, if reply count number is zero means no reply on that comment
  • if count is greater than zero then we are iterating each reply and get text.
  • nextPageToken contain the next data, here we are checking if nextPageToken has no value it means value is None, loop end, else loop will continue.

Below is the full implementation:

Python3

from googleapiclient.discovery import build

api_key = 'API KEY'

def video_comments(video_id):
    # empty list for storing reply
    replies = []

    # creating youtube resource object
    youtube = build('youtube', 'v3',
                    developerKey=api_key)

    # retrieve youtube video results
    video_response=youtube.commentThreads().list(
    part='snippet,replies',
    videoId=video_id
    ).execute()

    # iterate video response
    while video_response:

        # extracting required info
        # from each result object
        for item in video_response['items']:

            # Extracting comments
            comment = item['snippet']['topLevelComment']['snippet']['textDisplay']

            # counting number of reply of comment
            replycount = item['snippet']['totalReplyCount']

            # if reply is there
            if replycount>0:

                # iterate through all reply
                for reply in item['replies']['comments']:

                    # Extract reply
                    reply = reply['snippet']['textDisplay']

                    # Store reply is list
                    replies.append(reply)

            # print comment with list of reply
            print(comment, replies, end = '\n\n')

            # empty reply list
            replies = []

        # Again repeat
        if 'nextPageToken' in video_response:
            video_response = youtube.commentThreads().list(
                    part = 'snippet,replies',
                    videoId = video_id,
                      pageToken = video_response['nextPageToken']
                ).execute()
        else:
            break

# Enter video id
video_id = "Enter Video ID"

# Call function
video_comments(video_id)

Output:

Let’s verify the results:

3 Comments and 2 Replies