IBRAHIM ULUKAYA: Hi everyone, I'm Ibrahim Ulukaya from
YouTube API Developers Relations team joining you
today from New York studios.
And today, we'll talk about getting help
with YouTube APIs.
Either you're just a new developer starting to develop
with YouTube APIs, or you are already building the
applications and you just want to create a new functionality
and you're having some problems.
You may need some help.
And we'll definitely help you.
We're just trying to present the best
ways to get that help.
So I will go over the four different ways to get help.
I'll start with a demo.
I'll start with YouTube developer documentation.
I'll talk about today the developer documentation first,
and our API blog second, Stack Overflow third, and the last
one using the issue tracker.
Let's get started.
Let's talk about the developer documentation.
So developer documentation is the site map on the left side.
And let's say that you're having a problem with version
three, and you're trying to find the functionality.
In getting started, you'll see some help with adjusting your
application, implementing the OAuth2 [INAUDIBLE]
methods, or getting the client libraries to start developing.
In Guides, you will see how to upload a video of it, the code
samples, or doing it [INAUDIBLE] upload, as well as
there will be some technical documentations like the
difference between the channel IDs versus user names and the
Google+ IDs.
Or you can be having some problems, and you want to
actually migrate from client login to OAuth2 some technical
documentation here as well.
Also, you have a detailed documentation on
the reference site.
You'll see all the resources here like video, channels,
playlists, search, thumbnails.
And let's think that you actually
want to list the channels.
You want to actually get some information about a
channel of a user.
And you actually want to use the list method call.
Here, you will see all the required parameters, the
request itself, the filters, some optional parameters.
And you'll see it shows the response here, how the
response will look like.
You'll see the response will be a channel resource.
You'll see all the error codes and why they could be
happening, as well as at the end, you will see an API
explorer, which you can actually just plug in your
parameters and try the actual code, the actual
functionality.
As I mentioned earlier, it will return
that channel resource.
And in the channel resource in the response, you can actually
see what you can get back.
You can get the likes, the uploads, playlists, or you can
get some statistics--
and a lot of information will be available here--
and the formats of the responses and the other
parameters, as well as the attributes depending on that,
attached on that.
So developer documentation is really helpful for this.
You can even search developer documentation with additional
problems like channels.
You can actually go to documentation from there.
Or you can just use the site map on the left side, the left
navigation.
The second resource is the API blog.
In API Blog, we usually blog about the new things about use
of API, what's changing, what is new, and all the other--
[INAUDIBLE]
could be even a change on the developer documentation or
something else.
And they are really helpful.
You will get the most updated information.
So I really suggest you to subscribe to RSS feeds and get
the updated documentation right away.
And here, you'll see the latest documentation in
apiblog.youtube.com.
You will see all the latest challenges or the differences,
the latest updates on YouTube APIs.
You can do a search.
So today, actually, I want to talk about [INAUDIBLE]
featured requests or get more help, like one to one help
from the YouTube APIs.
And from there, we'll actually use Stack
Overflow of an issue tracker.
So I will actually search for a Stack Overflow blog.
And September 14, 2012, we actually issued a blog about
that talking about that we are not using
Google Groups anymore.
But instead, we are using the Stack Overflow for the coding
questions as the issue tracker for files, bugs, and featured
reports, featured requests.
So Stack Overflow is a really nice community to ask the
questions and get answers from peer to peer.
In that case, you can actually just--
all you need to use, the YouTube-API.
So we can track off all the questions about YouTube API.
And we can get the answers right away.
So far, we are actually trying our best to get all the
questions answered over there.
You will get your questions answered really fast.
Even before asking a new question, you can just search
for another question.
Or you are trying to get the thumbnail links, maybe.
You actually use YouTube API tag and ask for the
thumbnails.
Here, you will have already an answer about the thumbnails.
And you just go and just use the answer over there.
Or if your question is not over there, you can just
create a new question.
If you're not going to use the search engine, or you are
just-- even for faster response, you can actually
just use a Google search engine and just try to find
your question.
I use always these kinds of questions.
I use YouTube API tag.
It's a YouTube API question.
And then I say, how to set thumbnails.
Maybe my question is about [INAUDIBLE]
PHP.
I'm maybe looking for a PHP answer, PHP coding answer.
And here, I can actually see that the thumbnail set
operation, the method is already here from the
developer documentation.
All ready, people ask about the similar
questions of Stack Overflow.
As far as I can see here, I can just click the Stack
Overflow questioning here.
And it will actually take me to the
Stack Overflow question.
Or someone already asked about how to set the custom
thumbnails for videos.
And there's a response already here.
And they agreed on that.
So I can use the same response.
Or if there's not enough, I can actually create more
comments at the end or ask another
question from Stack Overflow.
But I will need to mention that Stack Overflow is a
community to ask coding questions.
So if your problem is more about YouTube's own thing
about how the videos are handled, how the search is
handed, or something, not about API or not coding, then
Stack Overflow is not a good platform for that one.
And if you have--
maybe you're already trying something, and you found the
bug, or maybe the server's not responding for your method,
and you want actually [INAUDIBLE], so rather than
creating a question in Stack Overflow, we highly recommend
you to use the issue tracker.
It's under code.google.com/p/g.issues
[INAUDIBLE] issues.
It's the open public issue tracker that you can actually
find your other issues over there.
Or you can create a new issue or a featured request.
To find the YouTube issues, you can actually use
api:youtube.
And it will actually go through and find all the
YouTube API problems, YouTube API issues.
Maybe you're adding some issue with the [INAUDIBLE], and you
see it's already filed here, so we don't need to create
another issue.
Rather than that, you'd actually rather just go and
star this issue.
You can star this issue, or you can create your own
problem maybe under the same topic.
So you will actually be notified when this issue is
fixed, or someone else had a similar problem or found a
different solution.
Rather than creating a new one, that's really helpful.
And it's also helpful for us, because we can actually track
how many people are having this issue.
And if the issue's really critical or the issue's really
valid that so many people already filed this issue, or
this featured request is really on high demand--
so they can prioritize things way easier if you rather than
creating a [INAUDIBLE]
issues just going to [INAUDIBLE], write your own
stuff or star this issue.
So we highly suggest people to use for their featured request
or bug filing to use the g.issue tracker.
And in the blog itself, you'll see the only
the templates here--
either Stack Overflow templates that will create a
Stack Overflow question or that will create a template
for you, a YouTube [INAUDIBLE] report which will show you
which API was affected off that, or the steps to
reproduce the issue.
So you can say that, oh, I used this API method call.
My code was like this.
And it returned to me like this.
Or when you did these parameters, the
response was like that.
So you can easily produce the issue and it can
help you way faster.
Or you may just want to actually create a featured
request using another template here--
filing your featured request.
And you will see that you create a request and the
reason for this feature, how it can help you,
and things like that.
You can even list the existing [INAUDIBLE].
We always ask you to check the list of existing [INAUDIBLE]
before filing a duplicate request.
So you just create this one.
You actually click the list of open APIs.
As you see, it will actually check the
label dash API YouTube.
Or you can just do the api:youtube as well.
So today, we actually went over the four different ways
of getting help.
The first one was going to developer.google.com/youtube
or developer documentation.
The second one was API Blog using the apiblog.youbue.com.
The third one was asking a call-in question on Stack
Overflow and getting peer to peer help or getting help from
us direct from here.
Or if it was a server issue, if it was any issue, like you
want to file a bug or create a feature request, you can just
use the g.issue tracker.
So these are the things that actually I
want to go over today.
And as the last thing, I want to mention that as developer
relations team, we are hiring almost
everywhere around the world.
And you go into developers.google.com/jobs.
You will see all the open positions as well as
descriptions of all the available jobs.
And make a comment, just check it out, and maybe if there's
something for you.
That was all the things that I want to talk about today.
Thanks for joining me, Ibrahim Ulukaya from New York.