Youtube API - How to limit results for pagination?

Question

I want to grab a user's uploads (ie: BBC) and limit the output to 10 per page.

Whilst I can use the following URL: http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/bbc/uploads/?start-index=1&max-results=10

The above works okay.

I want to use the query method instead:

The Zend Framework docs: http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.gdata.youtube.html

State that I can retrieve videos uploaded by a user, but ideally I want to use the query method to limit the results for a pagination.

The query method is on the Zend framework docs (same page as before under the title 'Searching for videos by metadata') and is similar to this:

$yt = new Zend_Gdata_YouTube();
$query = $yt->newVideoQuery();
$query->setTime('today');
$query->setMaxResults(10);
$videoFeed = $yt->getUserUploads( NULL, $query );

print '<ol>'; foreach($videoFeed as $video): print '<li>' . $video->title . '</li>'; endforeach; print '</ol>';

The problem is I can't do $query->setUser('bbc').

I tried setAuthor but this returns a totally different result.

Ideally, I want to use the query method to grab the results in a paginated fashion.

How do I use the $query method to set my limits for pagination?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I basically solved this in the same way as worchyld with a slight twist:

    $username = 'ignite';
    $limit = 30;  // Youtube will throw an exception if > 50
    $offset = 1;  // First video is 1 (silly non-programmers!)
    $videoFeed = null;
    $uploadCount = 0;
    try {
        $yt = new Zend_Gdata_YouTube();
        $yt->setMajorProtocolVersion(2);
        $userProfile = $yt->getUserProfile($username);
        $uploadCount = $userProfile->getFeedLink('http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007#user.uploads')->countHint;

        // The following code is a dirty hack to get pagination with the YouTube API without always starting from the first result
        // The following code snippet was copied from Zend_Gdata_YouTube->getUserUploads();
        $url = Zend_Gdata_YouTube::USER_URI .'/'. $username .'/'. Zend_Gdata_YouTube::UPLOADS_URI_SUFFIX;
        $location = new Zend_Gdata_YouTube_VideoQuery($url);
        $location->setStartIndex($offset);
        $location->setMaxResults($limit);
        $videoFeed = $yt->getVideoFeed($location);
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        // Exception handling goes here!
        return;
    }

The Zend YouTube API seems silly as the included getUserUploads method never returns the VideoQuery instance before it actually fetches the feed, and while you can pass a location object as a second parameter, it's an "either-or" situation - it'll only use the username parameter to construct a basic uri or only use the location, where you have to construct the whole thing yourself (as above).

Answer 2

I've decided just to use the user uploads feed as a way of getting pagination to work. http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/bbc/uploads/?start-index=1&max-results=10

If there is a way to use the query/search method to do a similar job would be interesting to explore.