Want to explore YouTube channels and analyze their content?
This small project helps you collect structured metadata from any public channel in just a few minutes.

What It Does

  • Fetches YouTube channel and video metadata using YouTube Data API v3
  • Saves data in JSON for easy analysis
  • Minimal setup, no frameworks, just Python scripts

GitHub Repo

YouTube API Explorer

How to Use It (Quick Steps)

  1. Get a YouTube API key

  2. Clone the repo

  3. Paste your key into config/api_config.yaml

  4. Run yt_api_test.py to confirm the key works

  5. Run:

    • fetch_channel_metadata.py
    • fetch_video_metadata.py

  6. Your data appears under:

    /output/[channel]/channel_data.json
    /output/[channel]/videos_data.json

Why I Built This

I often want quick access to structured data for analysis — especially for qualitative YouTube research or topic modeling.
Most tutorials are slow, require Jupyter, or don’t scale.

This script is just:

  • Python + API
  • Clean JSON output
  • Designed to plug into data pipelines later

What’s Next

  • Topic classification of video content using LLMs
  • Dashboards and analysis tools
  • Optional CSV export

Check it out: https://github.com/wguDataNinja/youtube-api-explorer