Question

I just need to get the view code from youtube urls. The api is returning back strings that look like this:

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XODUrTtvZks&feature=youtube_gdata_player

I need to get this part:

XODUrTtvZks

from the above, keep in mind that sometimes there may be additional parameters after the v=something like:

&feature=youtube_gdata_player

and sometimes there may not be. Can someone please provide the regex that would work in this situation and an example of how to use it using javascript?

Answer 1

This snippet only matches on URL’s from youtube.com:

var url = 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XODUrTtvZks&feature=youtube_gdata_player';
var matches = url.match(/^http[s]?:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch\?\s*v=([^&]+)/i);

if (matches) {
    var videoID = matches[1];
    // do stuff
}