How can i know that my Youtube API Data is correct?

Question

I having some trouble to understand something related to the API of youtube So my code is basically very simple:

name  = input("enter the username: ")
key = "MY API KEY"


data = urllib.request.urlopen("https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels? 
part=statistics&forUsername="+name+"&key="+key).read()
subs = json.loads(data)["items"][0]["statistics"]["subscriberCount"]

print(name + " has " + "{:,d}".format(int(subs)) + " subscribers!")

just yelling the number of subscribers after giving specific YouTube Username: The thing is that some Usernames(for example: Vsuase/Veritasium/Unbox Therapy ) which have many subs and the API-URL giving me wrong Data

Vsause - in return giving me back 72 subs

Veritasium/Unbox Therapy - not giving my any number at all

BUT, a channel "Computerphile" giving me that exact same subs they have.

How come that few Usernames work and few do not??

Answer 1

I tested in both, using the try-it functionality available in the YouTube Data API - Official Documentation and in the Google API Explorer and in both sites the results are closely¹ similar.

For example, when the statistics of the YouTube user vsauce is requested vía YouTube API, the value in subscriberCount is 14220819 and checking his YouTube channel it says: 14,220,825.

Here is the example for request the statistics of the YouTube user vsauce (using the try-it)

And here is the demo for request the statistics of the YouTube user vsauce (using the Google API Explorer).

I didn't see any differences in the values in subscriberCount by requesting the other channels you mentioned in your question.

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¹ You need consider that some channels has more changes in the quantity of subscribers than others and such results vary too in the responses of the API.

Answer 2

For some reason, if you change in the URL from forUsernae= --> id= it gives you the correct numbers.

TED channel: https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=statistics&id=UCAuUUnT6oDeKwE6v1NGQxug&key=AIzaSyDjnINqqxQlIg4kbXoPDVYOhHNfdmDbb9I