Get Started with the Vimeo API

Learn how to sign-up for Vimeo and get authenticated for Vimeo services.

We'll cover the following

In this lesson, we'll see the sign-up process of Vimeo and how to get authenticated to use Vimeo API services.

Sign up and create an application

You can sign up on the Vimeo platform with the following steps:

  • Provide a name, email ID, and password.
  • After you have entered your information, a survey form is shown. You can either fill the form and continue or skip the form.
  • The next screen will show Vimeo’s pricing plan, you don’t need to worry about that for this course.

A verification email is then sent to the registered email ID; click the link to verify the account. Once verified, you'll be redirected to Vimeo's homepage.

Next let’s create an application and generate an access token. To create an application, visit the Vimeo developer page and follow the steps below:

  1. Click "Create an app."
  2. In the required "App name" field, name your application.
  3. Briefly explain your application in the next required field, “App description.” The users see this description when your application asks permission to access their account.
  4. Next, decide about the access permissions for your application. Select the "No" option, check the agreement statement, and click the "Create App" button.

Congratulations! Your application has been created.

Generate an access token

Next, we’ll generate an access token for the application. Follow the steps below to generate a token:

  1. Click your application to view the details.
  2. On the setting page of your application, navigate to the "Generate Access Token" section.
  3. Here you see two options, "Authenticated (you)" and "Unauthenticated." The “Authenticated: option will allow access to your private data—for this course, you’ll need to select this option.
  4. This will expand the "Scopes" section—check the "Private" scope in addition to the "Public".
  5. Once you have checked "Private," more scopes will appear check all of them and click on the "Generate" button.
  6. This generates a token that is visible for the first time only. It is recommended to save this token somewhere safe.

Test our configuration and get USER_ID

To use Vimeo APIs, we need to send a request to the base_url shown in the code block below:

base_url = https://api.vimeo.com/

Click the edit button in the widget below and save the copied token as AUTH_CODE to use it throughout the course. Next, let's test our authentication code by executing the code widget below, which automatically extracts the user ID and assigns it to USER_ID. Click the "Save" button so we have the user ID available for use throughout the course.

url = "https://api.vimeo.com/me"
headers = {
    'Content-type': 'application/json',
    'Authorization': 'Bearer {{AUTH_CODE}}'
    }
response = requests.request("GET", url, headers=headers)
if response.status_code == 200:
    print("Congratulations! You have been authenticated successfully.")
    print("User's account ID is: ", json.dumps(response.json()['uri'], indent=4))
else:
    print("Following error is produced")
    print(json.dumps(response.json(), indent=4))

There is a brief description of categories, channels, videos, and groups in the table below:

Vimeo's resource

Description

Categories

A category defines a set of videos that belong to a specific genre.

Channels

This resource arranges videos based on their theme or some other criteria and groups them in Channels.

Videos

Videos are the main content on Vimeo.

Groups

Groups are the places like communities where the members can share, discuss, and collaborate on videos according to their likeness.