YouTube API Adds Topics, Universal Search

Janet Wagner, December 18th, 2012

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Google has released version 3.0 of the YouTube Data API which includes new functionality and features including Topics API, Universal Search, Channel Bulletin Post, Full Subscriber List Management, and more.

The YouTube Data API Version 3.0 is experimental and still in development. However, developers can use this API in conjunction with YouTube Player APIs and the YouTube Analytics API to create advanced third-party applications that provide users a complete YouTube experience.

The announcement published in the YouTube API Blog, describes the latest version of the YouTube Data API as “the API’s biggest overhaul to date” and here are just some of the new features and improvements:

• API returns data in JSON format instead of XML.
• New Topics API and Universal Search which is powered by Freebase. Search queries can now use Freebase IDs instead of keywords eliminating ambiguous search results.
• Available Client Libraries include .NET, Dart, Go, Java, JavaScript, Objective-C, PHP, Python and Ruby.
• Channel Bulletin Post and Full Subscriber List Management are new features that have been added to the version 3.0 API release.

Developers can experiment with the new YouTube Data API using the Google API Console and there is also detailed documentation available.