Trigger an Azure Function ? with Power Automate ??

This is a simple use case created when was learning about Azure Functions

??Note: I am not a code-first developer. I know some basic Power Fx expressions and can write simple prompts to OpenAI and copy and paste.

Case description

Send a notification to Microsoft Teams chat only if a followed YT channel uploads a new video which contains a specific term. e.g: "Demo".

Prerequisites

1. Azure Subscription (to deploy your Azure Functions)
2. Power Apps Developer Plan (or per-user/per-flow plan)
3. Google API key (call YouTube Data API v3)
4. GitHub account (for CI/CD optional) and VS Code to build, test and deploy.
5. YouTube user profile and followed channels

I have found a youtube-transcript-api · PyPI that does exactly what I was looking for. I also realized that this code uses an undocumented part of the YouTube API, which is called by the YouTube web-client. For dev/test purpose it was good enough for me.

I knew that I want to write a simple script that will use this code and return me some values to Power Automate in JSON. Learn that Azure Function HTTP trigger returns HTML so I had to ask for a JSON output.

I wanted to go fast and fail quickly so I followed the steps here: Create a Python function using Visual Studio Code - Azure Functions | Microsoft Learn

It was my first hands on experience with Phyton script in Azure Functions so I asked ChatGPT for help. Took pretty fast to get a working code.

That was the first working one, not judging if f-strings should be used it is a good start for a few minutes of prompt writing exercise:

import logging
import json
import azure.functions as func
from youtube_transcript_api import YouTubeTranscriptApi as yta
from youtube_transcript_api._errors import TranscriptsDisabled
import re

def main(req: func.HttpRequest) -> func.HttpResponse:
    logging.info('Python HTTP trigger function processed a request.')

    video_id = req.params.get('id')
    query = req.params.get('q')
    
    if not video_id:
        try:
            req_body = req.get_json()
        except ValueError:
            pass
        else:
            video_id = req_body.get('id')

    if video_id:
        try:
            transcript = yta.get_transcript(video_id)
        except TranscriptsDisabled:
            return func.HttpResponse(
                 "Transcripts are disabled for the specified video ID.",
                 status_code=404
            )
        except:
            return func.HttpResponse(
                 "No transcript available for the specified video ID.",
                 status_code=404
            )

        transcript_text =''
        for value in transcript:
            for key, val in value.items():
                if key == 'text':
                    transcript_text += val + ' '

        prefix = "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=" + video_id + "&t="
        filtered_list = []

        for obj in transcript:
            if query in obj['text']:
                filtered_list.append(obj)

        start_values = []
        for obj in filtered_list:
            start_values.append(round(float(obj['start'])))
        start_values_with_prefix = [prefix + str(start_val) + 's' for start_val in start_values]

        transcript_lines = transcript_text.splitlines()
        final_transcript = ' '.join(transcript_lines)
        lowercased_transcript = final_transcript.lower()

        jsdata = {"VideoID": video_id, "Words": len(re.findall(r'\w+', lowercased_transcript)), "QueryCount": lowercased_transcript.count(query), "VideoUrls": start_values_with_prefix ,  "Transcript": final_transcript}

        return func.HttpResponse(json.dumps(jsdata), mimetype="application/json", status_code=200)
    else:
        return func.HttpResponse(
             "Please provide a valid video ID in the query string or in the request body.",
             status_code=400
        )        

I wrote few more prompts just for different versions, copied that code, tested locally and deployed to Azure.

A function-specific API key is required. This is the default value when a level isn't specifically set, however when you initialize a Function in VS Code you can select Anonymous authorization level as well.

Additionally I set App Service authentication to Enabled and created an App registration so my Power Automate HTTP action can be called only from Power Automate, otherwise the function will reply with 401. Configure Azure AD authentication - Azure App Service | Microsoft Learn

For testing I always use the Manually trigger a flow trigger, after testing I just change the trigger and replace the parameters from the trigger: When a video is uploaded by a channel YouTube - Connectors | Microsoft Learn

I request the VideoID as id and a keyword query as q. The VideoID will come directly from channel trigger. The query keyword will depend of the specificity of that channel. For that I used a Compose action which is static variable.

E.g. If John Savill will upload a new video and mention "Azure" flow will send a notification how many times John used that phrase in his video. Another flow will trigger if Reza Dorrani, Shane Young, Scott Durow, Damien Bird, April Dunnam or Lisa Crosbie will mention "PowerApps", "Flow", "SharePoint" or "Demo".

GetVideoDetails is an HTTP action with a Get method to:

https://youtube.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?part=snippet%2CcontentDetails%2Cstatistics&id=<VideoID goes here>&q=<Keyword query goes here>&key=<API Key Goes here>        

It returns a lot of details about the video, e.g. "channelId", "title", "thumbnails", "channelTitle", "duration", "caption".

Regarding "caption" parameter I thought it will be enough if it "caption": "false", then I can skip calling my HTTP action to Azure Function. But it is false when there is no manually uploaded caption. It is still false if it auto-generated.

So I had to go and return an 404 error from my HTTP function if there not even a single auto-generated transcript.

This exception is handled by Power Automate: Configure run after option

Here is my test flow when transcript is generated. Azure KeyVault is optional, I could hardcode the Keys.

It was a fun automation to build while was learning a lot about Azure Functions. Finally I can save the results of mentioned keywords on a SharePoint or DataVerse table, pass the links with time stamps of mentioned keywords. I have hundreds of connectors to choose from. I could also create as many Azure Functions as Channel Id I want to follow and add additional outputs.

Here I can get a notification if Damien Bird mentions "Demo" in his video. Follow him here: DamoBird365 - YouTube

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