Question

I’m sure that this is likely a simple solution, but I can’t see my error. I’m making an API call to youtube to get some basic information on a youtube video using the video’s ID; specifically what I want is the (1) title, (2) description, (3) tags, and (4) thumbnail.

When I load an API url via my web browser, I see all the data. I don’t want to paste the entire response in this question, but paste the following url in your browser and you’ll see what I see: http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/_83A00a5mG4

If you look closely you’ll see media:thumbnail, media:keywords, content, etc. Everything I want is there. Now the troubles…

When I load this same url through the following functions (which I copied from the Vimeo api…), the thumbnail and keywords simply aren’t there.

function curl_get($url) {
    $curl = curl_init($url);
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 30);
    $return = curl_exec($curl);
    curl_close($curl);
    return $return;
}   

// youtube_get_ID is defined elsewhere...

$request_url = "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/" . youtube_get_ID($url);
$video_data = simplexml_load_string(curl_get($request_url));

These functions do give me a response with some data, but the keywords and thumbnail are missing. Could anyone please tell me why my thumbnail and keywords are missing? Thank you for any help!

Answer 1

Here’s the link for documentation on this.

Here’s a function I wrote:

function get_youtube_videos($max_number, $user_name) {
    $xml = simplexml_load_file('http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/' . $user_name . '/uploads?max-results=' . $max_number);

    $server_time = $xml->updated;

    $return = array();

    foreach ($xml->entry as $video) {
        $vid = array();

        $vid['id'] = substr($video->id,42);
        $vid['title'] = $video->title;
        $vid['date'] = $video->published;
        //$vid['desc'] = $video->content;

        // get nodes in media: namespace for media information
        $media = $video->children('http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/');

        // get the video length
        $yt = $media->children('http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007');
        $attrs = $yt->duration->attributes();
        $vid['length'] = $attrs['seconds'];

        // get video thumbnail
        $attrs = $media->group->thumbnail[0]->attributes();
        $vid['thumb'] = $attrs['url'];

        // get <yt:stats> node for viewer statistics
        $yt = $video->children('http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007');
        $attrs = $yt->statistics->attributes();
        $vid['views'] = $attrs['viewCount'];

        array_push($return, $vid);
    }

    return $return;
}

And here’s the implementation:

$max_videos = 9;
$videos = get_youtube_videos($max_videos, 'thelonelyisland');

foreach($videos as $video) {
    echo $video['title'] . '<br/>';
    echo $video['id'] . '<br/>';
    echo $video['date'] . '<br/>';
    echo $video['views'] . '<br/>';
    echo $video['thumb'] . '<br/>';
    echo $video['length'] . '<br/>';
    echo '<hr/>';
}