python gdata youtube comments feed unable to retrieve more than 150 comments

I'm using python's gdata module to pull out the comments of a youtube video, but I'm running into some issues, it works on relatively less popular videos (videos without many comments), but any video that has significantly more comments, will return me a bad request error.

gdata.service.RequestError: {'status': 400, 'body': 'Invalid value for parameter: video-id', 'reason': 'Bad Request'}

This is my function:

def getComments(client, video_id):
    comment_feed = client.GetYouTubeVideoCommentFeed(video_id=video_id)
    while comment_feed is not None:
        for comment in comment_feed.entry:
             yield comment
        next_link = comment_feed.GetNextLink()
        if next_link is None:
             comment_feed = None
        else:
             comment_feed = client.GetYouTubeVideoCommentFeed(next_link.href)

Anybody knows how to get around this?

EDIT:

So I decided to try another approach and this is what I got:

from gdata.youtube import service

comment_feed_url = "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/%s/comments?max-results=50"
USERNAME = ''
PASSWORD = ''

''' Get the comment feed of a video given a video_id'''
def WriteCommentFeed(video_id):
    client = service.YouTubeService()
    client.ClientLogin(USERNAME, PASSWORD)
    url = comment_feed_url % video_id
    comment_feed = client.GetYouTubeVideoCommentFeed(uri=url)
    allComments = []
    while comment_feed:

        for comment_entry in comment_feed.entry:
            allComments.append(comment_entry.content.text)

        print len(allComments)
        print comment_feed.GetNextLink().href
        comment_feed = client.Query(comment_feed.GetNextLink().href)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    WriteCommentFeed("5DdzE4k31fM")

And it seems to be breaking at 150 comments, so at the query for the 200th comment, I get this error:

'reason': server_response.reason, 'body': result_body}
gdata.service.RequestError: {'status': 414, 'body': '<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html lang=en>\n  <meta charset=utf-8>\n  <meta name=viewport content="initial-scale=1, minimum-scale=1, width=device-width">\n  <title>Error 414 (Request-URI Too Large)!!1</title>\n  <style>\n    *{margin:0;padding:0}html,code{font:15px/22px arial,sans-serif}html{background:#fff;color:#222;padding:15px}body{margin:7% auto 0;max-width:390px;min-height:180px;padding:30px 0 15px}* > body{background:url(//www.google.com/images/errors/robot.png) 100% 5px no-repeat;padding-right:205px}p{margin:11px 0 22px;overflow:hidden}ins{color:#777;text-decoration:none}a img{border:0}@media screen and (max-width:772px){body{background:none;margin-top:0;max-width:none;padding-right:0}}#logo{background:url(//www.google.com/images/errors/logo_sm_2.png) no-repeat}@media only screen and (min-resolution:192dpi){#logo{background:url(//www.google.com/images/errors/logo_sm_2_hr.png) no-repeat 0% 0%/100% 100%;-moz-border-image:url(//www.google.com/images/errors/logo_sm_2_hr.png) 0}}@media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:2){#logo{background:url(//www.google.com/images/errors/logo_sm_2_hr.png) no-repeat;-webkit-background-size:100% 100%}}#logo{display:inline-block;height:55px;width:150px}\n  </style>\n  <a href=//www.google.com/><span id=logo aria-label=Google></span></a>\n  <p><b>414.</b> <ins>That\xe2\x80\x99s an error.</ins>\n  <p>The requested URL <code>/feeds/api/videos/5DdzE4k31fM/comments</code>... is too large to process.  <ins>That\xe2\x80\x99s all we know.</ins>\n', 'reason': 'Request-URI Too Large'}

Anyone has any idea why?

Solution

When trying to paginate on the comments of a video having a large number of comments, the API generates pagination links with a length > 2048 chars. So you end up on a HTTP 414 Error Page.

To make it work:

Let's say you are making a following request:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/VIDEO_ID/comments

then one of your query string parameters shall be:

orderby=published

e.g. :

"https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/" + _videoId + "/comments?orderby=published&max-results=50"

This way, the API retrieves the results based on time rather than relevance, and that is presumably why the start-token which it generates is a lot shorter.

Hope this helps.