Analyze YouTube Analytics Data in Infragistics Reveal

Reveal is a data visualization solution provided by Infragistics and can be paired with the CData Connect Server and YouTube Analytics Connector to build dynamic dashboards from live YouTube Analytics data. The CData Connect Server creates a virtual database for YouTube Analytics and can be used to generate an OData API (natively consumable in Reveal) for YouTube Analytics. In this article, we walk through connecting to YouTube Analytics in Connect Server and connecting to Connect Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.

Add a Connect Server User

Create a User to connect to YouTube Analytics from Reveal through Connect Server.

1. Click Users -> Add
2. Configure a User
3. Click Save Changes and make note of the Authtoken for the new user

Connect to YouTube Analytics from Connect Server

CData Connect Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

1. Open Connect Server and click Connections
2. Select "YouTube Analytics" from Available Data Sources
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to YouTube Analytics.

   YouTube Analytics uses the OAuth authentication standard. You can use the embedded CData OAuth credentials or you can register an application with Google to obtain your own.

   In addition to the OAuth values, to access YouTube Analytics data set ChannelId to the Id of a YouTube channel. You can obtain the channel Id in the advanced account settings for your channel. If not specified, the channel of the currently authenticated user will be used.

   If you want to generate content owner reports, specify the ContentOwnerId property. This is the Id of the copyright holder for content in YouTube's rights management system. The content owner is the person or organization that claims videos and sets their monetization policy.

4. Click Save Changes
5. Click Privileges -> Add and add the new user (or an existing user) with the appropriate permissions (SELECT is all that is required for Reveal).

Add YouTube Analytics OData Endpoints in Connect Server

After connecting to YouTube Analytics, create OData Endpoint for the desired table(s).

1. Click OData -> Tables -> Add Tables
2. Select the YouTube Analytics database
3. Select the table(s) you wish to work with and click Next
4. (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
5. Save the settings

(Optional) Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

When accessing and connecting to multiple different domains from an application such as Ajax, there is a possibility of violating the limitations of cross-site scripting. In that case, configure the CORS settings in OData -> Settings.

• Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS): ON
• Allow all domains without '*': ON
• Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
• Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization

Save the changes to the settings.

Create a Dashboard in Reveal

With Connect Server configured, we can visualize YouTube Analytics data in Reveal.

1. Log into Reveal and click Dashboards -> New
2. Click Data Source -> OData Feed
3. Specify the Connect Server API endpoint URL (found in API -> Discovery -> Base URL), for example: CONNECT_SERVER_URL/api.rsc
4. Select Generic Credentials and specify the Connect Server username and authentication token
5. Select the entity you wish to visualize
6. Select fields and choose a chart type

More Information & Free Trial

At this point, you have created a simple dashboard from live YouTube Analytics data. For more information on creating OData feeds from YouTube Analytics (and more than 150 other sources), visit the Connect Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live YouTube Analytics data in tools that consume OData APIs.