How to pipe YouTube Analytics Data to CSV in PowerShell

The CData Cmdlets Module for YouTube Analytics is a standard PowerShell module offering straightforward integration with YouTube Analytics. Below, you will find examples of using our YouTubeAnalytics Cmdlets with native PowerShell cmdlets.

Creating a Connection to Your YouTube Analytics Data

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.

$conn = Connect-YouTubeAnalytics  -ContentOwnerId "$ContentOwnerId" -ChannelId "$ChannelId"

Selecting Data

Follow the steps below to retrieve data from the Groups table and pipe the result into to a CSV file:

Select-YouTubeAnalytics -Connection $conn -Table Groups | Select -Property * -ExcludeProperty Connection,Table,Columns | Export-Csv -Path c:\myGroupsData.csv -NoTypeInformation

You will notice that we piped the results from Select-YouTubeAnalytics into a Select-Object cmdlet and excluded some properties before piping them into an Export-Csv cmdlet. We do this because the CData Cmdlets append Connection, Table, and Columns information onto each "row" in the result set, and we do not necessarily want that information in our CSV file.

Deleting Data

The following line deletes any records that match the criteria:

Select-YouTubeAnalytics -Connection $conn -Table Groups -Where "Mine = True" | Remove-YouTubeAnalytics

Inserting and Updating Data

The cmdlets make data transformation easy as well as data cleansing. The following example loads data from a CSV file into YouTube Analytics, checking first whether a record already exists and needs to be updated instead of inserted.

Import-Csv -Path C:\MyGroupsUpdates.csv | %{
  $record = Select-YouTubeAnalytics -Connection $YouTubeAnalytics -Table Groups -Where ("Id = `'"+$_.Id+"`'")
  if($record){
    Update-YouTubeAnalytics -Connection $youtubeanalytics -Table Groups -Columns ("Snippet_Title","ContentDetails_ItemCount") -Values ($_.Snippet_Title, $_.ContentDetails_ItemCount) -Where ("Id = `'"+$_.Id+"`'")
  }else{
    Add-YouTubeAnalytics -Connection $youtubeanalytics -Table Groups -Columns ("Snippet_Title","ContentDetails_ItemCount") -Values ($_.Snippet_Title, $_.ContentDetails_ItemCount)
  }
}

As always, our goal is to simplify the way you connect to data. With cmdlets users can install a data module, set the connection properties, and start building. Download Cmdlets and start working with your data in PowerShell today!