Get Youtube Video Thumbnail and Other Information with PHP and Youtube API

YouTube api version 2 provides all necessary information about videos on YouTube. If you want to create a video gallery or want to embed YouTube videos on your website then it can give you extra power.

In this post I am going to show you how to get YouTube videos information like video title, description, thumbnail and other information with YouTube JSON api and php.

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Youtube API Function

youtube function receives YouTube video url as parameter. It automatically extracts video id from url and sends request to YouTube api server through curl.

/**
 * Youtube
 *
 * @version YouTube API V2
 * @param str youtube video url
 * @return object || void
 * @copyright w3bees.com
 */
function youtube($url)
{
  # get video id from url
  $urlQ = parse_url( $url, PHP_URL_QUERY );
  parse_str( $urlQ, $query );

  # YouTube api v2 url
  $apiURL = 'http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/'. $query['v'] .'?v=2&alt=jsonc';

  # curl options
  $options = array(
    CURLOPT_URL  => $apiURL,
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => false,
    CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 5 );

  # connect api server through cURL
  $ch = curl_init();
  curl_setopt_array($ch, $options);
  # execute cURL
  $json = curl_exec($ch) or die( curl_error($ch) );
  # close cURL connect
  curl_close($ch);

  # decode json encoded data
  if ($data = json_decode($json))
    return (object) $data->data;
}

Usages

youtube function returns all information as object.

# call youtube api function
$youtube = youtube('http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxxxx');
# title
$youtube->title;
# duration in seconds
$youtube->duration;
#video description
$youtube->description;
# thumbnail url High Quality
$youtube->thumbnail->hqDefault;
# thumbnail url Small Quality
$youtube->thumbnail->sqDefault;
# video rating out of five
$youtube->rating;
# total likes
$youtube->likeCount;
# video category
$youtube->category;
# total view
$youtube->viewCount;
# time upload time
$youtube->uploaded;