Youtube Data API v.3 - fully automated oAuth flow (Python)? - python-3.x

Question

I have been exploring the YouTube Data API. The premise of my project is simple: using the API, authenticate (yes, I have the credentials for the account) and then simply retrieve the list of all my videos, public and private.
I have been able to accomplish this successfully, except for the fully automated part. I have used code from various sources and when I run it on the command line, it provides me a link to be used in a browser so that the authorization takes place.
It looks something like this:
Please visit this URL to authorize this application: https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth?response_type=code&client_id=7932902759886-cb8ai84grcqshe24nn459ka46uh45ssj.apps.googleusercontent.com&redirect_uri=urn%3Aietf%3Awg%3Aoauth%3A2.0%3Aoob&scope=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googleapis.com%2Fauth%2Fyoutube.readonly&state=zNVvgEyO47nmacvdEEAhDsQipY194k&prompt=consent&access_type=offline&code_challenge=aF7uTCghjwgwjg49o3fgiIU-_ryK19rDeX4l1uzr37w&code_challenge_method=S256
Enter the authorization code:
....
Here's a snippet of my python code:
import google_auth_oauthlib.flow
import googleapiclient.discovery
import googleapiclient.errors
...
...
# Get credentials and create an API client
flow = google_auth_oauthlib.flow.InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file(
client_secrets_file, scopes)
credentials = flow.run_console()
youtube = googleapiclient.discovery.build(
api_service_name, api_version, credentials=credentials)
## MAKE youtube SEARCH REQUEST
last_date = '2018-10-01T00:00:00Z'
request = youtube.search().list(
part="snippet",
forMine=True,
maxResults=50,
order="date",
type="video"
)
all_items = []
response = request.execute()
My question here is the following: Is it possible to programatically perform the authorization so that the app can run standalone and not have to wait for this user action (to literally copy the URL from CMD, visit to get the token, and the copy and paste the token again)? I'd like to schedule this and therefore would like it to run and authenticate without human intervention. Is this possible at all? If so, can someone please point me to some working examples and/or other resources to help me get there? Thanks a million.

Answer 1

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# Sample Python code for youtube.channels.list
# See instructions for running these code samples locally:
# https://developers.google.com/explorer-help/guides/code_samples#python
#!/usr/bin/python3.7
import os
import pickle
import google_auth_oauthlib.flow
import googleapiclient.discovery
import googleapiclient.errors
scopes = ["https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.readonly"]
client_secrets_file = "client_secret.json"
api_service_name = "youtube"
api_version = "v3"
def main():
# Disable OAuthlib's HTTPS verification when running locally.
# *DO NOT* leave this option enabled in production.
os.environ["OAUTHLIB_INSECURE_TRANSPORT"] = "1"
# Get credentials and create an API client
flow = google_auth_oauthlib.flow.InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file(
client_secrets_file, scopes)
youtube = get_authenticated_service()
request = youtube.channels().list(
part="contentDetails",
mine=True
)
response = request.execute()
print(response)
def get_authenticated_service():
if os.path.exists("CREDENTIALS_PICKLE_FILE"):
with open("CREDENTIALS_PICKLE_FILE", 'rb') as f:
credentials = pickle.load(f)
else:
flow = google_auth_oauthlib.flow.InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file(client_secrets_file, scopes)
credentials = flow.run_console()
with open("CREDENTIALS_PICKLE_FILE", 'wb') as f:
pickle.dump(credentials, f)
return googleapiclient.discovery.build(
api_service_name, api_version, credentials=credentials)
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()

Answer 2

The Credentials instance from credentials = flow.run_console() has a built-in functionality to refresh token.
It'll will refresh the token when a request being execute if needed.
Therefore you can save the credentials object into pickle, and read it back when need it
A few alteration on Google python sample code:
def get_authenticated_service():
if os.path.exists(CREDENTIALS_PICKLE_FILE):
with open(CREDENTIALS_PICKLE_FILE, 'rb') as f:
credentials = pickle.load(f)
else:
flow = InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file(CLIENT_SECRETS_FILE, SCOPES)
credentials = flow.run_console()
with open(CREDENTIALS_PICKLE_FILE, 'wb') as f:
pickle.dump(credentials, f)
return build(API_SERVICE_NAME, API_VERSION, credentials = credentials)

Answer 3

copied from https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2InstalledApp
Step 3: Google prompts user for consent
In this step, the user decides whether to grant your application the requested access. At this stage, Google displays a consent window that shows the name of your application and the Google API services that it is requesting permission to access with the user's authorization credentials. The user can then consent or refuse to grant access to your application.
Your application doesn't need to do anything at this stage as it waits for the response from Google's OAuth 2.0 server indicating whether the access was granted. That response is explained in the following step.
Where this is important:
At this stage, Google displays a consent window that shows the name of your application and the Google API services that it is requesting permission to access with the user's authorization credentials.
So, at least as I interpret it, what you want to do should not be done for security reasons.
However: you can "simulate" a browser by how ever python have libs for do such. On the other hand: Once you got the auth-token you can re-use it instead of request a new token each time. I couldn't find it in provided doc on GitHub, but Java as example supports to store an obtained token along with its refresh token so it can be reused once obtained and auto-refreshed. Maybe python provides some way to store the obtained token (check if it contains a refresh token) and re-load it. Also: if you load such token, first you have to do is to refresh it before using it. Java provieds a way to just save a refresh token instead of the whole auth-token wich can be used in a later run to automatic obtain a new auth-token.
As response is a JSON maybe you could build some yourself if the lib doesn't already offer this.
// edit
In addition from https://github.com/googleapis/google-auth-library-python/blob/master/google/oauth2/credentials.py
There are methods to load a credential object either from an "authorized user info" (wich I also somewhere found can be loaded from file) or to load it directly from file. So, I guess you just have to figure out how to store the token. As doc says for from_authorized_user_file:
Creates a Credentials instance from an authorized user json file.
I guess that means you just have to save the token response you get after the initial authorization was done.