How to map youtube handles to channel IDs

Question

Youtube recently rolled out handles feature where they gave users youtube.com/@xxx type usernames, when visited these URLs show user's channel but I can't find any documentation or reference in API repositories.

How to extract youtube user channel ID from their handle?

Normi

Note that, while you can't fetch a channel given a handle, the handle itself is stored inside the channel response (channel -> snippet -> customUrl). – Boast

Answer 1

---

One more time YouTube Data API v3 doesn't provide a basic feature.

I recommend you to try out my open-source YouTube operational API. Indeed by fetching https://yt.lemnoslife.com/channels?handle=@HANDLE you will get the YouTube channel id you are looking for in item["id"].

For instance with the YouTube channel handle @WHO, you would get:

{
    "kind": "youtube#channelListResponse",
    "etag": "NotImplemented",
    "items": [
        {
            "kind": "youtube#channel",
            "etag": "NotImplemented",
            "id": "UC07-dOwgza1IguKA86jqxNA"
        }
    ]
}

Poirier

Thank you I used the following to parse the JSON string var JSON_Object = JObject.Parse(JSON_String); // var ChannelId = JSON_Object["items"][0]["id"].ToString(); return await ChannelVideosInfo(ChannelId); – Falconry

@Benjamin Loison Your open-source api is very unstable. It throws 500 error for some handles. – Fundus

@JeffMinsungKim Could you provide channel handles you are experiencing issues with? – Poirier

Note that if you're speaking about the unstability of the official instance itself, then consider hosting your own instance of my API. – Poirier

Answer 2

Wasted about 2 hours to derive the following working code/fix...

// Youtube NEW garbage handles to channel IDs
// https://mcmap.net/q/102624/-how-can-i-get-youtube-channel-id-using-channel-name-url/75374713#75374713
// https://youtube.com/@AndreoBee
// https://mcmap.net/q/103330/-how-to-map-youtube-handles-to-channel-ids
// One more time YouTube Data API v3 doesn't provide a basic feature.
// https://yt.lemnoslife.com/  Open Source YouTube API
/* sample JSON returned
        {
            "kind": "youtube#channelListResponse",
            "etag": "NotImplemented",
            "items": [
                {
                    "kind": "youtube#channel",
                    "etag": "NotImplemented",
                    "id": "UC9rnrMdYzfqdjiuNXV7q8oQ"
                }
            ]
        }
 */
/// <summary>
/// Return Videos from ChannelId (derived from new Google garbage handle to channel)
/// 20230415
/// </summary>
/// <param name="UserName"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
public async Task<List<YouTubeInfo>> UserVideosViaNewHandleToChannelId(String UserName)
{
        string URI = "https://yt.lemnoslife.com/channels?handle=" + UserName;
        //
        // https://swimburger.net/blog/dotnet/configure-servicepointmanager-securityprotocol-through-appsettings
        // https://mcmap.net/q/87700/-default-securityprotocol-in-net-4-5
        // without the following Microsoft garbage now (httpClient.GetStringAsync(URI);)   will crash.
        System.Net.ServicePointManager.SecurityProtocol |=
                                SecurityProtocolType.Tls11 | SecurityProtocolType.Tls12;
        ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback = delegate { return true; };
        //
        // https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/tutorials/console-webapiclient
        var httpClient = new HttpClient();
        httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Clear();
        httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(
            new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/vnd.github.v3+json"));
        httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("User-Agent", ".NET Foundation Repository Reporter");

        //
        // "https://api.github.com/orgs/dotnet/repos"
        var JSON_String = await httpClient.GetStringAsync(URI);
        Console.Write(JSON_String);
        // https://peterdaugaardrasmussen.com/2022/01/18/how-to-get-a-property-from-json-using-selecttoken/
        var JSON_Object = JObject.Parse(JSON_String);
        //
        var ChannelId = JSON_Object["items"][0]["id"].ToString();
        return await ChannelVideosInfo(ChannelId);
}

Falconry

Answer 3

As of December 2023, the YouTube API still doesn't have an endpoint that supports pulling channel data by handle.

Using PHP, I did find a bit of a workaround.

use Symfony\Component\BrowserKit\HttpBrowser;
use Symfony\Component\HttpClient\HttpClient;

public function getChannelIDFromUrl($url) {
 $httpClient = new HttpBrowser(HttpClient::create());
            $crawler = $httpClient->request('GET', $url);
            $channelUrl = $crawler->filterXPath('//meta[@property=\'og:url\']')
                ->attr('content');
            return explode('/', $channelUrl)[4];
}

Note: $url returns a string with the @ handle in it.

Quartering

Answer 4

now you can use the new parameter forHandle (docs)

The forHandle parameter specifies a YouTube handle, thereby requesting the channel associated with that handle. The parameter value can be prepended with an @ symbol. For example, to retrieve the resource for the "Google for Developers" channel, set the forHandle parameter value to either GoogleDevelopers or @GoogleDevelopers.

Dodder