Obtaining youtube credentials

Introduction

To integrate with youtube you need to obtain Oauth2 credentials.

We use Youtube API in a not typical way (that is we upload videos from OLCMS on behalf of OLCMS Consortium), this upload method is largely undocumented.

So we ended up with with roundabout solution.

What credentials do you need

First obtain a Google Account for your service.

OLCMS uses Youtube Data API v3.

You’ll need to obtain two types of youtube credentials:

  • Youtube Oauth2 Key for logging in to Youtube data API v3.
  • Oauth2 Refresh token

Obtaining youtube oauth2 key

Follow this google guide, which boils down to:

  • Obtain Google Account.
  • Go to Google Developer Console to Credentials Page.
  • Create “OAuth client ID credentials”
  • Download client_secret.json file.

Obtain refresh token

Current method

We currently use video_upload.py script from youtube-api samples repository, to upload videos to youtube.

This script stores refresh token in a json file generated on first use, so you’ll need to:

  1. Download our fork of api-samples-repository.
  2. Copy client secrets to python directory
  3. Run video_upload.py with dummy file.
  4. Perform authentication.
  5. Keep upload-oauth2.json file.

Desired method

Note

This method is not implemented but I decided to outline it here as I want to move from deprecated google API to something more future-proof, since Google does not document our use case need to document upgrade plan here.

Here I will outline how this should be done, if you have some time feel free to implement it.

Changes to OLCMS code

Instead of using old upload_video sample either use recent one or just rewrite it in pure python using sample as a sample.

New code doesn’t use Storage type to store refresh token, so you’ll need to create credentials by hand.

To obtain authenticated service you might use following snippet (that was tested to work):

# Authorize the request and store authorization credentials.
def get_authenticated_service():
  # flow = InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file(CLIENT_SECRETS_FILE, SCOPES)
  # credentials = flow.run_console()
  credentials = Credentials.from_authorized_user_info(
    scopes=SCOPES,
    info={
    'refresh_token': u'REFRESH_TOKEN',
    'client_id': u'CLIENT_ID',
    'client_secret': u'CLIENT_SECRET',
    }
  )
  return build(API_SERVICE_NAME, API_VERSION, credentials = credentials)

To obtain client_id and client_secret open client_secret.json and read client_id and client_secret properties there.

Obtaining refresh token

You can follow this tutorial, but here is the gist of it:

  1. Go to google oauth playground.

  2. Select all youtube scopes.

  3. Login.

  4. Click “Exchange Authorization Code for Tokens”

  5. You should get something that looks like:

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-length: 287
(...)
{
  "access_token": "token",
  "token_type": "Bearer",
  "expires_in": 3600,
  "refresh_token": "REFRESH TOKEN abdceffff"
}

  6. Copy value of refresh_token, in your case this will be REFRESH TOKEN abdceffff.

Create a playlist and obtain playlist ID

  1. Login to youtube, create new playlist.
  2. Open said playlist.
  3. You should get url that looks like: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrwbUZAqoi2gYedn9wbjqxXsRCMI_HOZb
  4. So your playlistId is value of list parameter, in our example it’s PLrwbUZAqoi2gYedn9wbjqxXsRCMI_HOZb.

Store permissions in environment variables

To store development permissions save them to .local.dev.env, in case of deployment see: deployment docs.

Store contents of client_secret.json as YOUTUBE_SECRET_JSON variable and contents of upload-oauth2.json as YOUTUBE_OAUTH2_JSON. Playlist id should be stored as YT_PLAYLIST_ID