How can I get the CHANNEL ID or USER ID of an YouTube account?

If you want to generate reports using the YouTube Analytics API you will need to have your YouTube USER_ID. Some reports from YouTube Data API will also require the CHANNEL_ID.

You can manually retrieve the USER ID and CHANNEL ID of your YouTube account by accessing this link:

YouTube Channel ID and User ID info

By clicking on the above link, a screen with your account’s Advanced Information will show up, something similar to this:

If you need to programmatically get the CHANNEL ID or USER ID of a YouTube account, you will have to enable YouTube Data API v3 on Services tab on your Google Console Project.

Requirements:

– well knowledge about Google APIs and how they work

– good PHP skills

– google-api-php-client library

– Google API Project with YouTube Data API service enabled

– a PHP application already authorized to access an YouTube account information

Assuming that you’ve already authorized your application, I will proceed to the PHP function that will help you retrieve the CHANNEL_ID from an YouTube account:

function yt_channelid ($client){
	$client->setUseObjects(true);
	require_once 'src/contrib/Google_YouTubeService.php';
	$service = new Google_YouTubeService($client);
	try{
	$data = $service->channels->listChannels('snippet', array('mine' => 'true',));
	} catch (Google_ServiceException $e) {
		echo "An error has occurred!";
		return;
	}

	$item=$data->items[0]->id;

	$client->setUseObjects(false);
}

The above function uses google-api-php-client library.

To obtain the channelid we will use the following statement:

$channelid=yt_channelid($client);

The USER_ID seems to be the CHANNEL_ID without the UC part. Because that UC is subject to feature changes and I didn’t knew how to retrieve it, I just stripped off the first two chars from CHANNEL_ID.

$userid=substr($channelid,2);

In conclusion, using the listChannels method from Google_YouTubeService class will allow you to get the USER ID and CHANNEL ID for a YouTube account.

You should also have a look at YouTube Analytics Dashboard, a WordPress plugin and a full functional example of YouTube Data API and YouTube Analytics API usage.

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