Question

Looking to grab all the comments from a given video, rather than go one page at a time.

from gdata import youtube as yt
from gdata.youtube import service as yts

client = yts.YouTubeService()
client.ClientLogin(username, pwd) #the pwd might need to be application specific fyi

comments = client.GetYouTubeVideoComments(video_id='the_id')
a_comment = comments.entry[0]

The above code with let you grab a single comment, likely the most recent comment, but I’m looking for a way to grab all the comments at once. Is this possible with Python’s gdata module?

---

The Youtube API docs for comments, the comment feed docs and the Python API docs

Answer 1

The following achieves what you asked for using the Python YouTube API:

from gdata.youtube import service

USERNAME = '[e-mail]'
PASSWORD = 'a_very_long_password'
VIDEO_ID = 'wf_IIbT8HGk'

def comments_generator(client, video_id):
    comment_feed = client.GetYouTubeVideoCommentFeed(video_id=video_id)
    while comment_feed is not None:
        for comment in comment_feed.entry:
             yield comment
        next_link = comment_feed.GetNextLink()
        if next_link is None:
             comment_feed = None
        else:
             comment_feed = client.GetYouTubeVideoCommentFeed(next_link.href)

client = service.YouTubeService()
client.ClientLogin(USERNAME, PASSWORD)

for comment in comments_generator(client, VIDEO_ID):
    author_name = comment.author[0].name.text
    text = comment.content.text
    print("{}: {}".format(author_name, text))

Unfortunately the API limits the number of entries that can be retrieved to 1000. This was the error I got when I tried a tweaked version with a hand crafted GetYouTubeVideoCommentFeed URL parameter:

gdata.service.RequestError: {'status': 400, 'body': 'You cannot request beyond item 1000.', 'reason': 'Bad Request'}

Note that the same principle should apply to retrieve entries in other feeds of the API.

If you want to hand craft the GetYouTubeVideoCommentFeed URL parameter, its format is:

'https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/{video_id}/comments?start-index={sta‌​rt_index}&max-results={max_results}'

The following restrictions apply: start-index <= 1000 and max-results <= 50.