PHP - Get YouTube subscriber count with Youtube API v3

readme.md

How to:

Here's a 'simple' way to get the YouTube subscriber number from Google's Youtube API v3:

1. Go to https://console.developers.google.com/apis/library

2. Log in with your Google account.

3. Next to the logo click on 'Project' and 'Create project'. Name it whatever you want and click on 'Create'.

4. Wait until the project is created, the page will switch to it by itself, it will take a couple of seconds up to a minute. Once it's done it will be selected next to the logo.

5. Once it's created and selected, click on 'Credentials' from the menu on the left.

6. Click on 'Create Credentials' and choose 'API Key'. You can restrict it to specific IPs, or types of requests (website, android, ios etc.) if you want, it's safer that way.

7. Copy your API KEY, you will need this in the script.

8. Make a new PHP file on your web server and use the following code, replacing YOUR_CHANNEL_ID and API_KEY with your channel's ID (it's the code at the end of your channel's URL) and the API Key you got in step 7.

<?php
$channel_id = "YOUR_CHANNEL_ID";
$api_key = "API_KEY";
$api_response = file_get_contents('https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=statistics&id='.$channel_id.'&fields=items/statistics/subscriberCount&key='.$api_key);
$api_response_decoded = json_decode($api_response, true);
echo $api_response_decoded['items'][0]['statistics']['subscriberCount'];

9. When you navigate to your script it will just spit out the subscriber count.

Hope it helps!

Troubleshooting:

If your server doesn't handle file_get_contents ok (some don't), you can try the CURL version of it. Paste this following function at the end of your file and replace file_get_contents in the code with curl_get_contents.

function curl_get_contents($url,$useragent='cURL',$headers=false, $follow_redirects=false,$debug=false) {
	$ch = curl_init();
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $useragent);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
	if ($headers==true){
		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER,1);
	}
	if ($headers=='headers only') {
		curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY ,1);
	}
		if ($follow_redirects==true) {
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1); 
	}
	if ($debug==true) {
		$result['contents']=curl_exec($ch);
		$result['info']=curl_getinfo($ch);
	} else {
		$result=curl_exec($ch);
	}
	curl_close($ch);
	return $result;
}

Thanks, for jQuery;

var url = 'https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=statistics&forUsername=pewdiepie&fields=items/statistics/subscriberCount&key=_API_KEY_';

$.getJSON(url)
.done(function(data){
   alert(data.items[0].statistics.subscriberCount);
})

PHP > 5
`<?php
$arrContextOptions=array(
"ssl"=>array(
"verify_peer"=>false,
"verify_peer_name"=>false,
),
);

$channel_id = " ";
$api_key = " ";
$api_response = file_get_contents('https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=statistics&id='.$channel_id.'&fields=items/statistics/subscriberCount&key='.$api_key, false, stream_context_create($arrContextOptions));
$api_response_decoded = json_decode($api_response, true);
echo $api_response_decoded['items'][0]['statistics']['subscriberCount'];
?>`

How to make realtime? Please

Dude the limit is ridiculous, I did it through a bash script with curl and inserted the counts into a database, because with client-side is impossible to NOT hit the limit. I think getting a bit more specific saves some of ur units, but it doesn't matter that much.

I want to check a channel A has registered channel B or not? Similarly, check for channel A with video view or like video B how do I do it ? Please

What do you mean exactly? See if a subscriber is on another channel, etc?

On Sat, Jun 15, 2019 at 5:15 PM Ngoc Anh ***@***.***> wrote: I want to check a channel A has registered channel B or not? Similarly, check for channel A with video view or like video B how do I do it ? Please — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <https://gist.github.com/9adb5c4a07b43e098473bdc76ff259a6?email_source=notifications&email_token=AJBRUUVXX5VH2DERWZ6GBHDP2VSXLA5CNFSM4HYP5XH2YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVNDWS43UINXW23LFNZ2KUY3PNVWWK3TUL5UWJTQAFTXOC#gistcomment-2944737>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AJBRUUTK27EQPWGBTGDOF7DP2VSXLANCNFSM4HYP5XHQ> .

-- Jayke Peters jaykepeters@gmail.com +1 (320) 428-0505

<?php
if ($_GET["c"]) {
	$channel_id = $_GET["c"];
	$api_key = "YOUR KEY";
	$api_response = file_get_contents('https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=statistics&id='.$channel_id.'&fields=items/statistics/subscriberCount&key='.$api_key);
	$api_response_decoded = json_decode($api_response, true);
	$z = $api_response_decoded['items'][0]['statistics']['subscriberCount'];
	if (empty($z)) {
		echo 'Bad YouTube channel id!';
	} else {
		echo $z;
	}
} else {
	echo "Bad request! use ?c=channel id";
}
?>

Hello, how could I make it real-time? Thanks!

@WinsDominoes, as you probably know, that is not possible with PHP, but just Google realtime API requests/real-time javascript updates, etc, and you will figure it out. Or put it on a timer, say every second, to update the stats...

I'm looking to make a subscriber count like social blade, can I do that with this?

Mine doesn't work? i have it in PHP 7 but it doesn't show up with anything, can i please have some help?

It's possible to make it real time by creating a login to your account and making an POST api call to https://www.youtube.com/youtubei/v1/creator/get_channel_dashboard

Try this with reactphp for async calls

I need instagram follower count api. Previous api not working in 2020. Can anyone help me?

Undefined index: items i am getting error like this how can I resolve this error i laravel
my code is
public function youtube()
{
$channel_id = '';
$api_key = '';
$api_response = $this->curl_get_contents('https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=statistics&id=' . $channel_id . '&fields=items/statistics/subscriberCount&key=' . $api_key);
$api_response_decoded = json_decode($api_response, true);
echo $api_response_decoded['items'][0]['statistics']['subscriberCount'];

}
function curl_get_contents($url,$useragent='cURL',$headers=false, $follow_redirects=false,$debug=false) {
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $useragent);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
    if ($headers==true){
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER,1);
    }
    if ($headers=='headers only') {
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY ,1);
    }
    if ($follow_redirects==true) {
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
    }
    if ($debug==true) {
        $result['contents']=curl_exec($ch);
        $result['info']=curl_getinfo($ch);
    } else {
        $result=curl_exec($ch);
    }
    curl_close($ch);
    return $result;
}

mianusman9808 - add a var_dump($api_response_decoded); before the echo, see what you're getting back, maybe it's some API error or the format has changed. Haven't checked this in a while

hello
i use code $result = $data['items'][0]['statistics']['subscriberCount']; but subscriber Count is rounded. example 3.89M subscriber to count is 3,890,000

i need current subscriber

Thank you! Who knew trying to connect to an API could be so complicated