jQuery FancyBox YouTube videos not working

Question

I have a situation whereby I cannot modify the HTML code for the anchor tag, with the exception of the \'href\' attribute. So adding a class to the anchor tag is not an opti

Answer 1

adding a class to the anchor tag is not an option

That is not necessarily true since you can always add the class via jQuery like

$('a[href*="youtube"]').addClass("fancybox")

Anyway, personally I don't like to use the swf mode for youtube videos any more but iframe mode; that makes them easier to handle and cross-platform compatible (including iOS)

What I would do is, using the .each() method :

• convert every single href to embed format using javascript .replace()
• bind each anchor to fancybox
• set the new converted href using the fancybox href API option

This is the code that works for both fancybox v1.3.4 or v2.x :

(function ($) {
  $(document).ready(function(){
    $('a[href*=youtube]').each(function () {
        // convert youtube swf href to embed for iframe
        var thisHref =  this.href
                       .replace(new RegExp("watch\\?v=", "i"), 'embed/')
                       .replace(new RegExp("&", "i"), '?');
        // bind fancybox to each anchor
        $(this).fancybox({
            "padding" : 0,
            "type" : "iframe",
            // add trailing parameters to href (wmode)
            "href" : thisHref + "&wmode=opaque"
        }); // fancybox
    }); // each
  }); // ready
})(jQuery);

Notice that I added wmode=opaque, otherwise the close button will be behind the youtube video.

See JSFIDDLE with version 1.3.4 ... or JSFIDDLE with v2.1.4