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YouTube video data script

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Mike_Pennisi
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

Fetch YouTube video metadata and insert it into each row in a given table.

Source code
/**
 * Copyright 2020 Bocoup
 *
 * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
 * of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to
 * deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the
 * rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or
 * sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
 * furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
 *
 * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
 * all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
 *
 * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
 * IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
 * FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
 * AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
 * LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
 * FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS
 * IN THE SOFTWARE.
 */
/**
 * Airtable YouTube video data script
 *
 * Fetch YouTube video metadata and insert it into each row in a given table.
 *
 * This script queries the YouTube Data API for video metadata. It stores the
 * data in a user-specified field. Requests to the YouTube API and to the
 * Airtable base are both batched for efficiency.
 *
 * **Notes on adapting this script.**
 *
 * The script prompts for input every time it is run. For some users, one or
 * more of these values may be the same with every execution. To streamline
 * their workflow, these users may modify this script by defining the constant
 * values in the first few lines. The values should be expressed as JavaScript
 * strings in the object named `hardCoded`.
 */
'use strict';

/**
 * Users may provide values for any of the properties in the following object
 * to streamline the script's startup.
 */
const hardCoded = {
    // Note: the code in Airtable scripts is visible to all users of the
    // Airtable base. By entering the YouTube Data API key here, all users will
    // have access to that sensitive information.
    youtubeKey: '',
    tableName: '',
    videoFieldName: '',
    destinationFieldName: '',
    statisticName: ''
};

/**
 * Do not edit any code following this message.
 */

const description = `
# Capture YouTube Analytics

For each record in a given table which contains a link to a video on
YouTube.com, fetch some metadata describing the video and store the information
in another field.

- [YouTube Data API
  Overview](https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/getting-started) - for
  details on configuring a YouTube account and retrieving an API key
- [YouTube Video Resource
  Representation](https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/videos#resource-representation) -
  for details on the available data, including the valid options for "statistic
  name"
`;

/**
 * The maximum number of videos which can be queried in a single request to the
 * YouTube Data API.
 */
const maxYoutubeResults = 50;
/**
 * The maximum number of records that can be updated in a single invocation of
 * `table.updateRecordsAsync`.
 */
const maxAirtableWrites = 50;

/**
 * Extract the YouTube video identifier from a YouTube video URL
 *
 * @params {string} url
 *
 * @returns {string|null} - a YouTube video ID if one can be found; `null`
 *                          otherwise
 */
function parseId(url) {
    let host, searchParams;

    try {
        ({host, searchParams} = new URL(url));
    } catch (_) {
        return null;
    }

    if (!/(^|\.)youtube\.com$/i.test(host)) {
        return null;
    }

    return searchParams.get('v') || null;
}

/**
 * Get a property value of an object, potentially nested within one or more
 * additional objects.
 *
 * @param {object} object - the value containing properties
 * @param {string} path - one or more property names separated by the period
 *                        character
 *
 * @returns {any} the value of the specified property
 */
function getPath(object, path) {
    let value = object;

    for (let propertyName of path.split('.')) {
        if (!(propertyName in value)) {
            throw new Error(`The property "${propertyName}" is not defined.`);
        }

        value = value[propertyName];
    }

    return value;
}

/**
 * Retrieve YouTube video metadata for one or more videos.
 *
 * @param {string} key - access key for the YouTube Data API
 * @param {object[]} items - one or more objects bearing a property named
 *                           `videoId`
 * @param {string} name - the name of a metadata statistic; statistics nested
 *                        within objects can be accessed using a period
 *                        character to separate property names
 *
 * @returns {Promise<object[]>} a copy of the input `items` array where each
 *                              element has been extended with a property named
 *                              `statistic`
 */
async function fetchVideoData(key, items, name) {
    let [part] = name.split('.', 1);
    let ids = items.map((item) => item.videoId);
    let urlString =
        'https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos' +
        `?key=${key}&id=${ids.join(',')}&part=${part}`;
    let response = await fetch(urlString);

    if (!response.ok) {
        throw new Error(await response.text());
    }

    return (await response.json()).items.map((item, index) => ({
        ...items[index],
        statistic: getPath(item, name)
    }));
}

output.markdown(description);

const youtubeKey = hardCoded.youtubeKey || (await input.textAsync('YouTube Data API v3 Key'));
const table = hardCoded.tableName
    ? base.getTable(hardCoded.tableName)
    : await input.tableAsync('Table to query');
const videoField = hardCoded.videoFieldName
    ? table.getField(hardCoded.videoFieldName)
    : await input.fieldAsync('Field containing YouTube video links', table);
const destinationField = hardCoded.destinationFieldName
    ? table.getField(hardCoded.destinationFieldName)
    : await input.fieldAsync('Field in which to store the statistic', table);
const statisticName =
    hardCoded.statisticName ||
    (await input.textAsync('Video statistic (e.g. "snippet.thumbnails.default.url")'));

const query = await table.selectRecordsAsync({fields: [videoField.id]});
const bareItems = query.records
    .map((record) => ({
        record: record,
        videoId: parseId(record.getCellValueAsString(videoField.id))
    }))
    .filter((item) => item.videoId);
const annotatedItems = [];

output.text(`Total number of records: ${query.records.length}`);
output.text(`Number of records with valid URLs: ${bareItems.length}`);

while (bareItems.length) {
    let workingSet = bareItems.splice(0, maxYoutubeResults);

    output.text(`Fetching statistics for ${workingSet.length} videos...`);

    annotatedItems.push(...(await fetchVideoData(youtubeKey, workingSet, statisticName)));
}

while (annotatedItems.length) {
    let workingSet = annotatedItems.splice(0, maxAirtableWrites);

    output.text(`Updating ${workingSet.length} records...`);

    let records = workingSet.map((item) => ({
        id: item.record.id,
        fields: {
            [destinationField.id]:
                // If the destination field is an attachment, assume the
                // statistic is a URL (e.g. a video preview image) and set the
                // value accordingly.
                destinationField.type === 'multipleAttachments'
                    ? [{url: item.statistic}]
                    : item.statistic
        }
    }));

    await table.updateRecordsAsync(records);
}

output.text('Operation complete.');

This script queries the YouTube Data API for video metadata. It stores the data in a user-specified field. Requests to the YouTube API and to the Airtable base are both batched for efficiency.

Notes on adapting this script.

The script prompts for input every time it is run. For some users, one or more of these values may be the same with every execution. To streamline their workflow, these users may modify this script by defining the constant values in the first few lines. The values should be expressed as JavaScript strings in the object named hardCoded.

Inspired by a user-created Airtable screencast:

4 Replies 4
Thomas_Winegard
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

This is pretty awesome. Thanks for this.

I’m curious what would need to be edited in order to “skip” videos that already have the particular stat set. For example, if I have an ever-growing list of video url’s that are being added to a particular field from a form, I don’t want to pull the title for every video, only the ones that don’t have the title populated yet.

Young_Kim1
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Hello, thank you for this script. It seems though as of August 2021 this script is generating an error: J: Error: Failed schema validation: must be a number
at main on line 178

If I convert the item.statistic for the view count to a Number the error goes away, but I get a 0 count for all videos. Is there a workaround or fix for this?

Been cleaning up some workspaces just now and found a base in which I gave this script a spin last year. It still works fine, @Young_Kim1, can you link to some of those videos you were querying, assuming it’s still an issue?

Because the combination of that error and your description makes me think some of the channels you’re tracking delisted their original videos or made them private, possibly so as to republish them. Or some of those videos got banned/removed. Either way, definitely not a script issue any maybe not even a problem on your end, if it persists, share some of the problematic URLs next time as that would be the first suspect to look into here.

EDIT: Oh, and how much did you change the original script? 0 is synonymous with the concept of falsyness in JS, so generally not a good number to be testing anything with. I’d sonner try 1 - 10 - 100 hah.

I have the same error message today. Anyone managed to find out what the issue is? Thanks