How can I retrieve YouTube video details from video URL using PHP?

Question

Using PHP, how can I get video information like title, description, thumbnail from a youtube video URL e.g.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4CRkpBGQzU


        

Answer 1

Yet another URL API that can be helpful is: https://www.youtube.com/get_video_info?video_id=B4CRkpBGQzU

video_id is "v" argument of youTube. Result is a dictionary in URL-encoded format (key1=value1&key2=value2&...)

This is undocumented API existing for long time, so exploring it is up to developer. I am aware of "status" (ok/fail), "errorcode" (100 and 150 in my practice), "reason" (string description of error). I am getting duration ("length_seconds") this way because oEmbed does not provide this information (strange, but true) and I can hardly motivate every employer to get keys from youTube to use official API

Answer 2

Here is a function that can return several pieces of information. I included some sample properties, but others are available:

<?php
extension_loaded('openssl') or die('openssl');

function youtube_info(string $id_s): object {
   $info_s = 'https://www.youtube.com/get_video_info?video_id=' . $id_s;
   $get_s = file_get_contents($info_s);
   parse_str($get_s, $get_m);
   $resp_s = $get_m['player_response'];
   return json_decode($resp_s)->microformat->playerMicroformatRenderer;
}

$o = youtube_info('2zPxY5WGG1E');

var_dump(
   $o->title->simpleText,
   $o->description->simpleText,
   $o->thumbnail->thumbnails[0]->url
);

https://github.com/89z/sienna/blob/a5ba9109/youtube/youtube.php

Answer 3

function to get video id from video url

function getYTid($ytURL) {

    $ytvIDlen = 11; // This is the length of YouTube's video IDs

    // The ID string starts after "v=", which is usually right after 
    // "youtube.com/watch?" in the URL
    $idStarts = strpos($ytURL, "?v=");

    // In case the "v=" is NOT right after the "?" (not likely, but I like to keep my 
    // bases covered), it will be after an "&":
    if($idStarts === FALSE)
        $idStarts = strpos($ytURL, "&v=");
    // If still FALSE, URL doesn't have a vid ID
    if($idStarts === FALSE)
        die("YouTube video ID not found. Please double-check your URL.");

    // Offset the start location to match the beginning of the ID string
    $idStarts +=3;

    // Get the ID string and return it
    $ytvID = substr($ytURL, $idStarts, $ytvIDlen);

    return $ytvID;

}

and then

$video = getYTid($videourl);
$video_feed = file_get_contents("http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/$video");
            $sxml = new SimpleXmlElement($video_feed);

            //set up nodes
            $namespaces = $sxml->getNameSpaces(true);
            $media = $sxml->children($namespaces['media']);
            $yt = $media->children($namespaces['yt']);
            $yt_attrs = $yt->duration->attributes();

            //vars
             $video_title = $sxml->title;

             $video_description = $sxml->content;

             $video_keywords = $media->group->keywords;

             $video_length = $yt_attrs['seconds'];

Answer 4

I know this is an old question but I wrote a package for this purpose, I will put it here maybe someone needs this.

composer require smoqadam/youtube-video-info:dev-master

$details = $video->getDetails();
echo $details->getVideoId();
echo $details->getTitle();
echo $details->getThumbnails();
echo $details->getViewCount();
echo $details->getRating();

more info in here

Answer 5

You can get data from youtube oembed interface in two formats: XML and JSON

Interface address: http://www.youtube.com/oembed?url=youtubeurl&format=json

Use this PHP function to get data

 function get_youtube($url){

 $youtube = "http://www.youtube.com/oembed?url=". $url ."&format=json";

 $curl = curl_init($youtube);
 curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
 $return = curl_exec($curl);
 curl_close($curl);
 return json_decode($return, true);

 }

$url = // youtube video url 

// Display Data 
print_r(get_youtube($url));

Don't forget to enable extension=php_curl.dll in your php.ini

Answer 6

To get youtube video description, different sized thumbnail, tags, etc use updated v3 googleapis

Sample URL: https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?part=snippet&id=7wtfhZwyrcc&key=my_google_api_key

$google_api_key = 'google_api_key';
$video_id = 'youtube_video_id';
$api_url = 'https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?part=snippet&id='.$video_id.'&key='.$google_api_key;
$json = file_get_contents($api_url);
$obj = json_decode($json);
var_dump($obj);