I am looking to write code that takes a video ID as input and retrieves the comments made on the corresponding video. Here’s a link to the API docs. I tried this code
String videoId = "id"; YouTube.Comments.List list2 = youtube.comments().list(Arrays.asList("snippet")); list2.setId(Arrays.asList(videoId)); list2.setKey(apiKey); Comment c = list2.execute().getItems().get(0);
but I get an IndexOutOfBoundsException
on the last line because getItems
is returning an empty List
. I set videoId
as a valid YouTube video ID (one which I have already successfully been able to get video data like views, title, etc from), thinking that would work but clearly I was wrong. Unless I missed something I can’t find anything in the docs for the Video
class about getting comment data, so that’s why I’m turning to SO for help again.
EDIT: Per stvar’s comment I tried changing the second line of the above code to
YouTube.CommentThreads.List list2 = youtube.commentThreads().list(Arrays.asList("snippet"));
and of course changed the type of c
to CommentThread
.
It is the CommentThreads
API I’m supposed to use, right? Either way, this is also returning an empty list…
Advertisement
Answer
Here is the complete Java code that retrieves all comments (top-level and replies) of any given video:
List<Comment> get_comment_replies( YouTube youtube, String apiKey, String commentId) { YouTube.Comments.List request = youtube.comments() .list(Arrays.asList("id", "snippet")) .setParentId(commentId) .setMaxResults(100) .setKey(apiKey); List<Comment> replies = new ArrayList<Comment>(); String pageToken = ""; do { CommentListResponse response = request .setPageToken(pageToken) .execute(); replies.addAll(response.getItems()); pageToken = response.getNextPageToken(); } while (pageToken != null); return replies; } List<CommentThread> get_video_comments( YouTube youtube, String apiKey, String videoId) { YouTube.CommentThreads.List request = youtube.commentThreads() .list(Arrays.asList("id", "snippet", "replies")) .setVideoId(videoId) .setMaxResults(100) .setKey(apiKey); List<CommentThread> comments = new ArrayList<CommentThread>(); String pageToken = ""; do { CommentThreadListResponse response = request .setPageToken(pageToken) .execute(); for (CommentThread comment : respose.getItems()) { CommentThreadReplies replies = comment.getReplies(); if (replies != null && replies.getComments().size() != comment.getSnippet().getTotalReplyCount()) replies.setComments(get_comment_replies( youtube, apiKey, comment.getId())); } comments.addAll(response.getItems()); pageToken = response.getNextPageToken(); } while (pageToken != null); return comments; }
You’ll have to invoke get_video_comments
, passing to it the ID of the video of your interest. The returned list contains all top-level comments of that video; each top-level comment has its replies
property containing all the associated comment replies.