Implementation: Subscriptions

The following examples show how to use the YouTube Data API (v3) to perform functions related to subscriptions.

Retrieve a channel's subscriptions

Call the subscriptions.list method to retrieve subscriptions for a particular channel. There are two ways to identify the channel:

• To retrieve the authenticated user's subscriptions, set the mine parameter's value to true. A request that uses the mine parameter must be authorized using OAuth 2.0.

  https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer/#p/youtube/v3/youtube.subscriptions.list?
          part=snippet,contentDetails
          &mine=true

• To retrieve subscriptions for any other channel, set the channelId parameter's value to that channel's unique YouTube channel ID. The following example retrieves a list of channels subscribed to by the TED channel on YouTube.

  https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer/#p/youtube/v3/youtube.subscriptions.list?
          part=snippet,contentDetails
          &channelId=UCAuUUnT6oDeKwE6v1NGQxug

  Note: The API returns a 403 (Forbidden) HTTP response code if the specified channel does not publicly expose its subscriptions and the request is not authorized by the channel's owner.

See the subscriptions.list method's documentation for code samples.

Add a subscription

Call the subscriptions.insert method to add a channel subscription. This request must be authorized using OAuth 2.0. The request body is a subscription resource that sets the following values:

• The snippet.resourceId.kind contains the value youtube#channel.
• The snippet.resourceId.channelId property identifies the channel that is being subscribed to. The property value is a unique YouTube channel ID. The channel ID could be obtained in multiple ways, including calling the channels.list method or retrieving search results for channels.

The following API request subscribes you to the TED channel on YouTube:

https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer/#p/youtube/v3/youtube.subscriptions.insert?
        part=snippet

The request body is:

{
  "snippet": {
    "resourceId": {
      "kind": "youtube#channel",
      "videoId": "UCAuUUnT6oDeKwE6v1NGQxug"
    }
  }
}

See the subscriptions.insert method's documentation for code samples.

Delete a subscription

This example deletes a subscription. This request must be authorized using OAuth 2.0. This example has two steps:

• Step 1: Retrieve the subscriptions for the authenticated user's channel

  Call the subscriptions.list method to retrieve the list of subscriptions. The preceding example for retrieving a channel's subscriptions explains how to make this request.

  The application calling the API could process the API response to display a list of subscriptions, using each subscription's ID as a key. In the response, each item's id property identifies the subscription ID that uniquely identifies the corresponding subscription. You will use that value to remove an item from the list in the next step.

• Step 2: Delete a subscription

  Call the subscriptions.delete method to delete a subscription. Set the request's id parameter to the subscription ID for the subscription that you want to remove. This request must be authorized using OAuth 2.0.

  To complete the request in the APIs Explorer, you need to set the id property's value.

  https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer/#p/youtube/v3/youtube.subscriptions.delete?
          id=SUBSCRIPTION_ID

See the subscriptions.delete method's documentation for code samples.

Retrieve a list of subscribers to the authorized user's channel

To retrieve a list of channels that subscribe to the authenticated user's channel, call the subscriptions.list method and set the mySubscribers parameter's value to true. The request must be authorized using OAuth 2.0.

https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer/#p/youtube/v3/youtube.subscriptions.list?
        part=snippet,contentDetails
        &mySubscribers=true