How can I get direct video url from YouTube video URL?

Question

I'm going to play YouTube and Vimeo videos using React-Native. For now I implemented React-Native-Video and it does not support to play YouTube or Vimeo urls while can play direct video urls. So I just want to get a direct reference to a file (or a stream?) from YouTube Video URL. e.g from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCwL3-hkKrg

Is there any good third party services or websites to solve this problem? No matter what types of code or ways you will use though I'm using React-Native to play YouTube videos currently.

Solution 1

Finally, I was able to get youtube video file reference url from KeepVid website.

Because I don't think the website supports restful api, I fetched its html content and parsed to get download urls. I didn't write code here as it is very simple. I would be glad if it helped you.

Solution 2

You can obtain video urls of YouTube by this code:

    // ES6 version
const videoUrls = ytplayer.config.args.adaptive_fmts
  .split(',')
  .map(item => item
    .split('&')
    .reduce((prev, curr) => (curr = curr.split('='),
      Object.assign(prev, {[curr[0]]: decodeURIComponent(curr[1])})
    ), {})
  )
  .reduce((prev, curr) => Object.assign(prev, {
    [curr.quality_label || curr.type]: curr
  }), {});

console.log(videoUrls);

// ES5 version
var videoUrls = ytplayer.config.args.adaptive_fmts
  .split(',')
  .map(function (item) {
    return item
      .split('&')
      .reduce(function (prev, curr) {
        curr = curr.split('=');
        return Object.assign(prev, {[curr[0]]: decodeURIComponent(curr[1])})
      }, {});
  })
  .reduce(function (prev, curr) {
    return Object.assign(prev, {
      [curr.quality_label || curr.type]: curr
    });
  }, {});

console.log(videoUrls);