Question

Been scouring the internet looking for documentation that gives a list of acceptable strings for the function setOrderBy.

The youtube API page on google code has a link to a dead page at Zend Framework docs, and the docs that I was able to find here (I would give a direct link but can’t find any way to deep link to specific Zend docs – on the left expand Zend_Gdata -> youTube -> Zend_Gdata_YouTube_VideoQuery), provide no more detail than could be derived from the function name:

setOrderBy( string $value ) : \Zend_Gdata_YouTube_Query
Set the value of the orderby parameter

Parameters
Name    Type    Description
$value  string  
Returns
Type    Description
\Zend_Gdata_YouTube_Query   Provides a fluent interface

The function in the Zend library is defined as follows:

/**
 * @param string $value
 * @return Zend_Gdata_Gbase_ItemQuery Provides a fluent interface
 */
public function setOrderBy($value)
{
    if ($value !== null) {
        $this->_params['orderby'] = $value;
    } else {
        unset($this->_params['orderby']);
    }
    return $this;
}

So not much help there either… several google searches didn’t reveal anything. Is there any reference or documentation that maps specific strings to expected output?

**EDIT***

I found a newer version of the youtube php developer API docs. There is a section below that has more information for setOrderBy(). There is a list of 4 strings it will take, but if you provide the strings UPPER_CASE as shown in this documentation (eg: VIEW_COUNT) the query will not work. An example above the setOrderBy documentation calls the function using a camelCase string, and by brute force I was able to find these 4 working parameters:

'viewCount'
'relevance'
'updated'
'rating'

Answer 1

Using a google Search combining the actual parameters I found that worked (see edits above) with a few API related search terms, I found the resource that maps strings to expected results:

http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/reference.html#orderbysp

In short, the strings this function can take are:

For a video feed:

'relevance'
'published'
'viewCount'
'rating'

For a playlist feed:

'position'
'commentCount'
'duration'
'published'
'title'
'viewCount'