How do I check if a video exists on YouTube, using PHP?

Question

How do I check if a video exists on YouTube, using PHP?

Answer 1

You want to validate if a youtube url is an url to a real youtube video? This is quite hard, you could use regular expressions, but keep in mind that there are loads of valid ways to express a youtube url:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p72I7g-RXpg
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?asv=76621-2&v=p72I7g-RXpg
• http://www.youtube.com/v/RdPxlTX27Fk
• etc.

Also the video code can contain alphanumeric characters, underscores, -characters (dunno what they are called) and possibly more.