How do I get the YouTube video ID from a URL?

Question

I want to get the v=id from YouTube’s URL with JavaScript (no jQuery, pure JavaScript).

Example YouTube URL formats

http://www.youtube.c

Answer 1

I created a function that tests a users input for Youtube, Soundcloud or Vimeo embed ID's, to be able to create a more continous design with embedded media. This function detects and returns an object withtwo properties: "type" and "id". Type can be either "youtube", "vimeo" or "soundcloud" and the "id" property is the unique media id.

On the site I use a textarea dump, where the user can paste in any type of link or embed code, including the iFrame-embedding of both vimeo and youtube.

function testUrlForMedia(pastedData) {
var success = false;
var media   = {};
if (pastedData.match('http://(www.)?youtube|youtu\.be')) {
    if (pastedData.match('embed')) { youtube_id = pastedData.split(/embed\//)[1].split('"')[0]; }
    else { youtube_id = pastedData.split(/v\/|v=|youtu\.be\//)[1].split(/[?&]/)[0]; }
    media.type  = "youtube";
    media.id    = youtube_id;
    success = true;
}
else if (pastedData.match('http://(player.)?vimeo\.com')) {
    vimeo_id = pastedData.split(/video\/|http:\/\/vimeo\.com\//)[1].split(/[?&]/)[0];
    media.type  = "vimeo";
    media.id    = vimeo_id;
    success = true;
}
else if (pastedData.match('http://player\.soundcloud\.com')) {
    soundcloud_url = unescape(pastedData.split(/value="/)[1].split(/["]/)[0]);
    soundcloud_id = soundcloud_url.split(/tracks\//)[1].split(/[&"]/)[0];
    media.type  = "soundcloud";
    media.id    = soundcloud_id;
    success = true;
}
if (success) { return media; }
else { alert("No valid media id detected"); }
return false;
}