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

This returns metadata about a video:

http://www.youtube.com/oembed?url={videoUrlHere}&format=json

Using your example, a call to:

http://www.youtube.com/oembed?url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4CRkpBGQzU&format=json

Returns the following, which you can digest and parse with PHP:

{
    "provider_url": "http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/",
    "thumbnail_url": "http:\/\/i3.ytimg.com\/vi\/B4CRkpBGQzU\/hqdefault.jpg",
    "title": "Joan Osborne - One Of Us",
    "html": "\u003ciframe width=\"459\" height=\"344\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B4CRkpBGQzU?fs=1\u0026feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e",
    "author_name": "jzsdhk",
    "height": 344,
    "thumbnail_width": 480,
    "width": 459,
    "version": "1.0",
    "author_url": "http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/jzsdhk",
    "provider_name": "YouTube",
    "type": "video",
    "thumbnail_height": 360
}