Get Youtube information via JSON for single video (not feed) in Javascript

Question

So I am trying to get information from a single youtube video via in the JSON format. Like title description category, ect whatever I can get besides the comments. I am trying to do this in Javascript. I noticed the link below but all of their examples are how to get video information from feeds. I would like to get the information from a single video assuming i know its ID.

https://developers.google.com/youtube/2.0/developers_guide_json

I was also looking at this Stackoverflow Question but I have an issue with the get request it says "test.js (line 10) GET http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/VA770w...v=2&alt=json-in-script&callback=listInfo

200 OK 9ms"

In brief, if i have a single youtube videos id like VA770wpLX-Q, what would the url look like to get that videos information in JSON?

Thank you

Solution 1

UPDATE MAY/2015:

This solution doesn't work properly, YouTube API v2 is in process to be discontinued soon.

More info at: https://www.youtube.com/devicesupport

---

Try something like this:

var video_id='VA770wpLX-Q';

$.getJSON('http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/'+video_id+'?v=2&alt=jsonc',function(data,status,xhr){
    alert(data.data.title);
    // data contains the JSON-Object below
});

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/wqwxg/

The returned JSON looks like this:

{
    "apiVersion": "2.1",
    "data": {
        "id": "VA770wpLX-Q",
        "uploaded": "2011-02-24T22:31:02.000Z",
        "updated": "2012-04-08T21:37:06.000Z",
        "uploader": "drdrevevo",
        "category": "Music",
        "title": "Dr. Dre - I Need A Doctor (Explicit) ft. Eminem, Skylar Grey",
        "description": "Music video by Dr. Dre performing I Need A Doctor featuring Eminem and Skylar Grey (Explicit). © 2011 Aftermath Records",
        "tags": ["Dr", "Dre", "Eminem", "New", "Song", "Skylar", "Grey", "GRAMMYs", "Dr.", "Need", "Doctor", "video", "Eazy", "N.W.A.", "NWA", "easy", "drdre", "and", "em"],
        "thumbnail": {
            "sqDefault": "http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VA770wpLX-Q/default.jpg",
            "hqDefault": "http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VA770wpLX-Q/hqdefault.jpg"
        },
        "player": {
            "default": "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA770wpLX-Q&feature=youtube_gdata_player"
        },
        "content": {
            "5": "http://www.youtube.com/v/VA770wpLX-Q?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata"
        },
        "duration": 457,
        "aspectRatio": "widescreen",
        "rating": 4.902695,
        "likeCount": "430519",
        "ratingCount": 441253,
        "viewCount": 88270796,
        "favoriteCount": 306556,
        "commentCount": 270597,
        "status": {
            "value": "restricted",
            "reason": "requesterRegion"
        },
        "restrictions": [{
            "type": "country",
            "relationship": "deny",
            "countries": "DE"
        }],
        "accessControl": {
            "comment": "allowed",
            "commentVote": "allowed",
            "videoRespond": "allowed",
            "rate": "allowed",
            "embed": "allowed",
            "list": "allowed",
            "autoPlay": "denied",
            "syndicate": "allowed"
        }
    }
}

Solution 2

UPDATED 2018

API v2 deprecated. New youtube api v3 works only with developer token and has limitation for free connections.

You can get JSON without API:

http://www.youtube.com/oembed?url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojCkgU5XGdg&format=json

Or xml

http://www.youtube.com/oembed?url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojCkgU5XGdg&format=xml

new 2018 json response has

{
  "html": "<iframe width=\"480\" height=\"270\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/ojCkgU5XGdg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen></iframe>",
  "title": "Creativity and Drugs (Eng Sub)",
  "thumbnail_height": 360,
  "provider_name": "YouTube",
  "author_url": "https://www.youtube.com/user/serebniti",
  "thumbnail_width": 480,
  "height": 270,
  "provider_url": "https://www.youtube.com/",
  "type": "video",
  "width": 480,
  "version": "1.0",
  "author_name": "serebniti",
  "thumbnail_url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ojCkgU5XGdg/hqdefault.jpg"
}

Thumbs:

hqdefault.jpg has less quality but always exist.

http://img.youtube.com/vi/ojCkgU5XGdg/hqdefault.jpg

http://img.youtube.com/vi/ojCkgU5XGdg/sddefault.jpg

Max size

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ojCkgU5XGdg/maxresdefault.jpg

Mini thumbs:

http://img.youtube.com/vi/ojCkgU5XGdg/0.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/ojCkgU5XGdg/1.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/ojCkgU5XGdg/2.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/ojCkgU5XGdg/3.jpg

Annotations

http://www.youtube.com/annotations_invideo?cap_hist=1&video_id=ojCkgU5XGdg

parse mobile page 16kb

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ojCkgU5XGdg

don't forget change user agent to iOS / Safari 7

also

http://www.youtube.com/get_video_info?html5=1&video_id=ojCkgU5XGdg

also how embed youtube live

https://www.youtube.com/embed/live_stream?channel=UCkA21M22vGK9GtAvq3DvSlA

Where UCkA21M22vGK9GtAvq3DvSlA is your channel id. You can find it inside youtube account on "My Channel" link.

Live thumb

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/W-fSCPrYSL8/hqdefault_live.jpg

Solution 3

Problem

YouTube API doesn't support JSONP as it should - see Issue 4329: oEmbed callback for JSONP. Also, YouTube Data API v2 is deprecated.

Solution

You can use the Noembed service to get oEmbed data with JSONP for YouTube videos.

Bonus

• no API keys are needed
• no server-side proxy is required

Example

For your VA770wpLX-Q video, you can try a link like this:

https://noembed.com/embed?url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA770wpLX-Q

Or this for JSONP:

https://noembed.com/embed?callback=example&url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA770wpLX-Q

Those links have a standard URL of a YouTube video passed as the url parameter. It works not only with YouTube but also with Vimeo and other sites with URLs like:

https://noembed.com/embed?url=https://vimeo.com/45196609

Demo

Here is a simple example using jQuery:

var id = 'VA770wpLX-Q';
var url = 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=' + id;

$.getJSON('https://noembed.com/embed',
    {format: 'json', url: url}, function (data) {
    alert(data.title);
});

See: DEMO on JS Bin.

Other options

• Embedly (commercial service, free up to 5000 URLs/month)
• Oohembed (update: now bought by Embedly, but the source is available)
• AutoEmbed (update: seems to be down or discontinued)

More info

See also those questions:

• Youtube Video title with API v3 without API key?
• Response for JSONp request to youtube oembed call giving "invalid label" error

Solution 4

in v3:

$.getJSON('https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?id={videoId}&key={myApiKey}&part=snippet&callback=?',function(data){

 if (typeof(data.items[0]) != "undefined") {
     console.log('video exists ' + data.items[0].snippet.title);
   } else {
     console.log('video not exists');
 }   
});

In response a @Jonathan via server side, using PHP and CURL:

$url = "https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?id=".$videoId."&key=".$miApikey."&part=snippet";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
$output=curl_exec($ch);                 
$response = json_decode($output, TRUE);
print_r($response);

View more solutions

Comments

[DG3]

post your jquery code you have tried

[Frank Visaggio]

hey jquery wasnt my issue i just couldnt figure out the right url or pattern to get the json data. The answer below pointed me in the right direction

[Frank Visaggio]

url = "gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/NWHfY_lvKIQ?v=2&alt=json‌​" thats how you do it. NWHfY_lvKIQ is the ID of the video. after that you can do a $.getJSON(url, function(data){ and get the json from there

[Tolen]

I want to ask how to get the duration in format HH:MM:ss because in json file it is in the Seconds ,is there any function can do this already!!

[Nishan]

Sadly oembed does not support jsonp (i.e. with callback), so using it cross-domain in the browser will be a problem.

[Alexufo]

@BlaM i can load it with jsonp learn.jquery.com/ajax/working-with-jsonp but jQuery cant parse response. :-(

[Nishan]

That's what I meant. The YouTube server does not support to send JSONP for those oembeds.

[Jonathan]

doesn't seem a good idea to show your key like that. It is better to call your server side script by ajax that fetchs that url

[rsp]

@BobSinclar Thanks. It also works for Vimeo and other sites, see: noembed.com/#supported-sites

[Jasom Dotnet]

Not supported anymore "error":{"code":410,"message":"No longer available"

[Ken Sharp]

@Jonathan Google provides an API key like this so that you can do it publicly. The restrictions are set Google-side. This is the correct way to do what is needed. The API key cannot be used outside of the domains that you allow via the console. It's all made very clear in the console.

[rsp]

@KenSharp If the first party can't be trusted (API v3 doesn't support JSONP and API v2 is deprecated) then we can either tell the original poster that it can't be done or we can use a third party service that works for what was asked in the question. But if you have a better solution then please post an answer.

[jakob.j]

Is it known how Noembed does it?

[yckart]

@jakob.j It's open source. So, yes.

[machineaddict]

@Alexufo you can use your website backend to proxy that connection. this way it will work

[EricZhao]

However there is no duration info