CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-3.xyoutube-apiurllibhttp-error
Takiro
Takiro

Reputation: 470

"HTTP Error 401: Unauthorized" when querying youtube api for playlist with python

I try to write a simple python3 script that gets some playlist informations via the youtube API. However I always get a 401 Error whereas it works perfectly when I enter the request string in a browser or making a request with w-get. I'm relatively new to python and I guess I'm missing some important point here.

This is my script. Of course I actually use a real API-Key.

from urllib.request import Request, urlopen
from urllib.parse import urlencode


api_key = "myApiKey"

playlist_id = input('Enter playlist id: ')
output_file = input('Enter name of output file (default is playlist id')

if output_file == '':
    output_file = playlist_id

url = 'https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems'

params = {'part': 'snippet',
          'playlistId': playlist_id,
          'key': api_key,
          'fields': 'items/snippet(title,description,position,resourceId/videoId),nextPageToken,pageInfo/totalResults',
          'maxResults': 50,
          'pageToken': '', }

data = urlencode(params)

request = Request(url, data.encode('utf-8'))
response = urlopen(request)
content = response.read()

print(content)

Unfortunately it rises a error at response = urlopen(request)

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "gpd-helper.py", line 35, in <module>
  response = urlopen(request)
File "/usr/lib/python3.4/urllib/request.py", line 153, in urlopen
  return opener.open(url, data, timeout)
File "/usr/lib/python3.4/urllib/request.py", line 461, in open
  response = meth(req, response)
File "/usr/lib/python3.4/urllib/request.py", line 571, in http_response
  'http', request, response, code, msg, hdrs)
File "/usr/lib/python3.4/urllib/request.py", line 499, in error
  return self._call_chain(*args)
File "/usr/lib/python3.4/urllib/request.py", line 433, in _call_chain
  result = func(*args)
File "/usr/lib/python3.4/urllib/request.py", line 579, in http_error_default
  raise HTTPError(req.full_url, code, msg, hdrs, fp)
urllib.error.HTTPError: HTTP Error 401: Unauthorized

I looked up the documentation but couldn't find any hint. According to the docs other authentication than the api key is not required for listing a public playlist.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 6189

Answers (1)

Takiro
Takiro

Reputation: 470

After diving deeper into the docs of python and google I found the solution to my problem.

Pythons Request object automatically creates a POST request when the data parameter is given but the youtube api expects GET (with post params)

The Solution is to ether supply the GET argument for the method parameter in python 3.4

request = Request(url, data.encode('utf-8'), method='GET')

or concatenate the url with the urlencoded post data

request = Request(url + '?' + data)

Upvotes: 1

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