Unable to get the correct "Publish date" from the original YouTube video

ok Thank you! Let us see if anyone has another suggestion.

Here you go:

thank you!

Hi there @Wojtek108! 👋

I did some checking and according to YouTube’s API the Published At value is supposed to be the date the video was added to the playlist, not when the video itself was published: 



Glad you were able to come up with a workaround here. I’m not sure what the macro is doing exactly but the only other workaround I could think of would be to:

• Set up another Zap that uses a New Video In Channel (YouTube) trigger - which should give the date and time the video was actually published (not when it was added to a specific playlist).
• In that Zap, you’d record information for the videos in another Google Sheets spreadsheet using a Create Spreadsheet Row (Google Sheets) action.
• Then in your current Zap, you’d use a Lookup Spreadsheet Row (Google Sheets) action to search for that video to retrieve the desired publish date (from the new spreadsheet) and add that into the spreadsheet to record the correct publish date.  

 
If you decide to give that suggested workaround a try and run into any trouble let us know. Happy to help further! 🙂

Apologies for missing your reply here previously, @Wojtek108! 

Ah I see! Sorry to hear the alternative workaround I suggested won’t be suitable for your use case here. Seems like sticking with your current semi-automated workaround may be the best way forward for now.

That said, it may also be worth reaching out to YouTube and the Zapier Support team to request that a feature request be opened to also have the date the video was published not just the date the video was added to the playlist. Although it’s not currently possible with YouTube’s API, at least it would make them aware of the need for this and allow us to track user interest. 🙂

Here you go. You have to though get the indentation right. As I pasted the script, it all got messed up and aligned to the left. But you get the point. Use chatgpt to help you along.

function fetchYouTubeVideoPublishedDate(videoId) {

var apiKey = 'xxxxx'; // Replace with your actual API key

var apiUrl = 'https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?id=' + videoId + '&part=snippet&key=' + apiKey;

try {

var response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(apiUrl);

var data = JSON.parse(response.getContentText());

if (data.items && data.items.length > 0) {

var publishedDate = data.items[0].snippet.publishedAt;

return publishedDate;

} else {

return 'Video not found';

}

} catch (error) {

return 'Error fetching video data';

}

}

function pasteVideoPublishedDateToSheet() {

var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getActiveSheet();

var selectedRow = sheet.getActiveRange().getRow();

var videoId = sheet.getRange(selectedRow, 5).getValue();

var publishedDate = fetchYouTubeVideoPublishedDate(videoId);

var columnToPaste = 6; // Change this to the desired column index

sheet.getRange(selectedRow, columnToPaste).setValue(publishedDate);

}

function createCustomMenu() {

var ui = SpreadsheetApp.getUi();

ui.createMenu('Custom Menu')

.addItem('Paste Video Published Date', 'pasteVideoPublishedDateToSheet')

.addToUi();

}