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YouTube collections

Introduction

YouTube is a social media site focused on video sharing.

Please note that your usage of Funnelback to gather content from YouTube must comply with YouTube's terms of service.

Getting API key

To be able to gather content from YouTube you must first use your Google account to create an API key. Google provides instructions on creating an API key which will provide the most up-to-date instructions for creating the key.

Configuration options

YouTube collections support the following settings:

Metadata mappings

YouTube collections includes a number of default YouTube specific metadata mappings:

Class ID Type Behaviour Explanation Metadata fields included
author text content /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/channelTitle
authorUrl text display /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/channelUrl
c text content Description /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/description
category text content /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/category
commentCount number N/A /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/commentCount
d date date Date /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/publishedDate
dislikeCount number N/A /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/dislikes
duration text display /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/durationPretty
durationInSeconds number N/A /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/durationInSeconds
favoriteCount number N/A /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/favoriteCount
identifier text display /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/videoId
imageSmall text display Image URL - small /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/thumbnails/veryDefault/thumbNailUrl
imageMedium text display Image URL - medium /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/thumbnails/medium/thumbNailUrl
imageLarge text display Image URL - large /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/thumbnails/high/thumbNailUrl
latLong geospatial x/y co-ordinate N/A /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/latLong
likeCount number N/A /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/likes
t text content Title /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/title
viewCount number N/A /com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord/viewCount

Use the -SF query processor option to access these metadata fields on the search response and in the templates (i.e. -SF=[author,viewCount]).

Limits

Please note that YouTube applies limits to the volume of content which can be retrieved from their APIs, and so in the case of large channels Funnelback may be unable to gather all historical content.

Working with the fetched data

Funnelback will crawl YouTube and convert responses into XML. You can use the metadata customisation tool to map elements to metadata classes.

Note: To preview the crawled records please enable debug mode by setting youtube.debug=true in collection.cfg file.

The XML that Funnelback generates for a YouTube collection is as follows:

<com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord>
  <url>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=video_id&amp;feature=youtube_gdata_player</url>
  <title>some title</title>
  <description>some description</description>
  <videoId>video_id</videoId>
  <viewCount>1</viewCount>
  <commentCount>0</commentCount>
  <thumbnails>
    <veryDefault>
      <thumbNailUrl>https://i.ytimg.com/vi/video_id/default.jpg</thumbNailUrl>
      <thumbNailUrlWidth>120</thumbNailUrlWidth>
      <thumbNailUrlHeight>90</thumbNailUrlHeight>
      <thumbNailUrlExtras class="linked-list"/>
    </veryDefault>
    <medium>
      <thumbNailUrl>https://i.ytimg.com/vi/video_id/mqdefault.jpg</thumbNailUrl>
      <thumbNailUrlWidth>320</thumbNailUrlWidth>
      <thumbNailUrlHeight>180</thumbNailUrlHeight>
      <thumbNailUrlExtras class="linked-list"/>
    </medium>
    <high>
      <thumbNailUrl>https://i.ytimg.com/vi/video_id/hqdefault.jpg</thumbNailUrl>
      <thumbNailUrlWidth>480</thumbNailUrlWidth>
      <thumbNailUrlHeight>360</thumbNailUrlHeight>
      <thumbNailUrlExtras class="linked-list"/>
    </high>
    <stndard>
      <thumbNailUrl>https://i.ytimg.com/vi/video_id/sddefault.jpg</thumbNailUrl>
      <thumbNailUrlWidth>640</thumbNailUrlWidth>
      <thumbNailUrlHeight>480</thumbNailUrlHeight>
      <thumbNailUrlExtras class="linked-list"/>
    </stndard>
    <maxres>
      <thumbNailUrl>https://i.ytimg.com/vi/video_id/maxresdefault.jpg</thumbNailUrl>
      <thumbNailUrlWidth>1280</thumbNailUrlWidth>
      <thumbNailUrlHeight>720</thumbNailUrlHeight>
      <thumbNailUrlExtras class="linked-list"/>
    </maxres>
  </thumbnails>
  <publishedDate>2016-08-16T23:14:04.000Z</publishedDate>
  <category/>
  <durationInSeconds>378</durationInSeconds>
  <durationPretty>00:06:18</durationPretty>
  <likes>1</likes>
  <dislikes>0</dislikes>
  <favoriteCount>0</favoriteCount>
  <channelTitle>channel_name</channelTitle>
  <channeld>channel_id</channeld>
  <channelUrl>https://www.youtube.com/channel/channel_id</channelUrl>
  <embedHtml>&lt;iframe width=&quot;480&quot; height=&quot;270&quot; src=&quot;//www.youtube.com/embed/video_id&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allow=&quot;autoplay; encrypted-media&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;</embedHtml>
  <extras class="linked-list"/>
</com.funnelback.socialmedia.youtube.v3.YouTubeXmlRecord>

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