How do I check if a video exists on YouTube, using PHP?

Question

How do I check if a video exists on YouTube, using PHP?

Answer 1

Youtube has support for the oEmbed format.
Compared to the xml responsed provided by Pascal MARTIN, mine has only to download 600 bytes against 3800 bytes, making it faster and less bandwidth cosuming (only 1/6 of the size).

function yt_exists($videoID) {
    $theURL = "http://www.youtube.com/oembed?url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=$videoID&format=json";
    $headers = get_headers($theURL);

    return (substr($headers[0], 9, 3) !== "404");
}

$id = 'yyDUC1LUXSU'; //Video id goes here

if (yt_exists($id)) {
    //  Yep, video is still up and running :)
} else {
    //  These aren't the droids you're looking for :(
}

Answer 2

What about using Youtube's API?
After all, that would mean using some official, which is less likely to change than going with parsing some HTML page.

For more information: YouTube APIs and Tools - Developer's Guide: PHP

The Retrieving a specific video entry seems quite interesting: if you send a request to an URL like this one:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/videoID

(replacing "videoID" by the ID of the video, of course – "GeppLPQtihA" in your example), you'll get some ATOM feed if the video is valid; and "Invalid id" if it's not

And, I insist: this way, you rely on a documented API, and not on some kind of behavior that exists today, but is not guaranteed.

Answer 3

Here is the solution that I use to check if YouTube video exists using video id. This is C# code, but basically you can check if the thumbnail of the video exists, you will either get 200 or 404 which is very convenient.

    private async Task<bool> VideoExists(string id)
    {
        var httpClient = new HttpClient();
        var video = await httpClient.GetAsync($"https://img.youtube.com/vi/{id}/0.jpg");
        return video.IsSuccessStatusCode;
    }

Answer 4

Request the URLs with the HEAD method, like so:

HEAD /watch?v=p72I7g-RXpg HTTP/1.1
Host: www.youtube.com                         

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
[SNIP]


HEAD /watch?v=p72I7g-BOGUS HTTP/1.1
Host: www.youtube.com              

HTTP/1.1 303 See Other
[SNIP]
Location: http://www.youtube.com/index?ytsession=pXHSDn5Mgc78t2_s7AwyMvu_Tvxn6szTJFAbsYz8KifV-OP20gt7FShXtE4gNYS9Cb7Eh55SgoeFznYK616MmFrT3Cecfu8BcNJ7cs8B6YPddHQSQFT7fSIXFHd5FmQBk299p9_YFCrEBBwTgtYhzKL-jYKPp2zZaACNnDkeZxCr9JEoNEDXyqLvgbB1w8zgOjJacI4iIS6_QvIdmdmLXz7EhBSl92O-qHOG9Rf1HNux_xrcB_xCAz3P3_KbryeQk_9JSRFgCWWgfwWMM3SjrE74-vkSDm5jVRE3ZlUI6bHLgVb7rcIPcg

Answer 5

A new way to get a YouTube video data after September 2021, is by cURL in PHP:

function getYouTubeData($videoId) {
    $theURL = "https://www.youtube.com/oembed?url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=$videoId&format=json";

    $curl = curl_init($theURL);
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

    $body = curl_exec($curl);
    curl_close($curl);

    return json_decode($body, true);
}

Usage:

$ytData = getYouTubeData($video_id);

if (empty($ytData)) {
    $error = 'YouTube movie data could not be fetched.';
}
$title = $ytData['title'];

Sample output:

Array
(
    [title] => Use online tools available at Laminas Starter Kit - Laminas MVC
    [author_name] => Divix
    [author_url] => https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6lBQpNdQH6cu0j15qhkCAg
    [type] => video
    [height] => 113
    [width] => 200
    [version] => 1.0
    [provider_name] => YouTube
    [provider_url] => https://www.youtube.com/
    [thumbnail_height] => 360
    [thumbnail_width] => 480
    [thumbnail_url] => https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LjDdAcB9-Mo/hqdefault.jpg
    [html] => <iframe width="200" height="113" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LjDdAcB9-Mo?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
)

Answer 6

As commented by @dbro, the answer by Pascal MARTIN was an acceptable answer at that time. However, since the API had moved forward, fixed and improved, a new solution that works is the following. Please take note that this is based on the technique provided by @Pascal and I quote:

...if you send a request to an URL like this one

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/videoID
(Replacing "videoID" by the idea of the video, of course -- "GeppLPQtihA" in your example)

You'll get some ATOM feed (**STOP HERE**)

The new URL to use and this is for V3 of the API is https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?id={the_id_of_the_video}&key={your_api_key}&part={parts}

WHERE

• {the_id_of_the_video} you should know what this is

• {your_api_key} is your app's key that can be found in your Developer Console

• {parts} a comma-separated list, check here for valid values

Now for the Result

If the Video Id is VALID you will get data in the items field that includes the Id of the video and the information you queried through the parts parameter.

If the Video Id is NOT VALID then you will get an empty items.

Supplying a wrong key gives you an ERROR 400 (an error object).

Answer 7

You should request to this URL

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?id={the_id_of_the_video}&key={your_api_key}&part=status

After that, you will receive the response json that contains uploadStatus field

{
    etag = "\"I_8xdZu766_FSaexEaDXTIfEWc0/8QgL7Pcv5G8OwpNyKYJa8PaQTc0\"";
    items =     (
                {
            ...
            status =             {
                embeddable = 1;
                license = youtube;
                privacyStatus = public;
                publicStatsViewable = 1;
                uploadStatus = processed;
            };
        }
    );
    ...
}

And there are 5 possible value for uploadStatus

deleted, failed, processed, rejected, uploaded

For uploadStatus = processed or uploaded => your youtube video is available

Answer 8

Found this solution on github: Check if youtube video exists

Easy to use:

$headers = get_headers('http://www.youtube.com/oembed?url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nonexistingid');

if (!strpos($headers[0], '200')) {
    echo "The YouTube video you entered does not exist";
}

Working fine.

Answer 9

Here is a solution that doesn't involve using youtube api, it checks if the video id exists when the url is loaded

function checkYoutubeUrlIsValid($url) {
    $buffer = file_get_contents($url);
    $matches = [];
    preg_match('#[a-zA-Z0-9_-]{11}$#', $url, $matches);

    return strpos($buffer, $matches[0]) !== false;
}

Hope that helps

Answer 10

You want to validate if a youtube url is an url to a real youtube video? This is quite hard, you could use regular expressions, but keep in mind that there are loads of valid ways to express a youtube url:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p72I7g-RXpg
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?asv=76621-2&v=p72I7g-RXpg
• http://www.youtube.com/v/RdPxlTX27Fk
• etc.

Also the video code can contain alphanumeric characters, underscores, -characters (dunno what they are called) and possibly more.

Answer 11

Another (kind of inefficient) way is to use cURL to get the HTML of the supposed video page and run some regular expressions to verify that it's an actual video page.

Answer 12

/**
* Check youtube url, check video exists or not,
*
* @param $url full youtube video url
*
* @return string - yotube video id
*/  
public static function checkYoutube($url) 
{
    if (preg_match('%(?:youtube(?:-nocookie)?\.com/(?:[^/]+/.+/|(?:v|e(?:mbed)?)/|.*[?&]v=)|youtu\.be/)([^"&?/ ]{11})%i', $url, $match)) 
    {   
        $headers = get_headers('http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/' . $match[1]);

        if (strpos($headers[0], '200')) 
        {
            return $match[1];
        } 

        return false;   
    } 

    return false;
} 

link:

https://github.com/DimitriMikadze/php-helpers

Answer 13

I used the YouTube API for checking if a video exists on You Tube. I downloaded the Google API Client Library for PHP. I used the following function:

/**
* Used to check if the given movie is availabe on youtube
*
* It uses youtube api and checks if given movie is available on youtube
* If a movie is not available then it returns false
*
* @param string $youtube_video_url the youtube movie url
*
* @return boolean $is_available indicates if the given video is available on youtube
*/
private function IsMovieAvailable($youtube_video_url)
{
    /** The autoload.php file is included */
    include_once("autoload.php");

    /** Is available is set to false */
    $is_available = false;

    /** The youtube video id is extracted */
    $video_id = str_replace("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=", "",   $youtube_video_url);

   $DEVELOPER_KEY = $google_api_key;
   $client = new \Google_Client();
   $client->setDeveloperKey($DEVELOPER_KEY);

   // Define an object that will be used to make all API requests.
   $youtube = new \Google_Service_YouTube($client);

   // Call the search.list method to retrieve results matching the specified
   // query term.
   $searchResponse = $youtube->videos->listVideos('status', array('id' => $video_id));

   /** Each item in the search results is checked */
   foreach ($searchResponse['items'] as $video) {
       /** If the video id matches the given id then function returns true  */
       if ($video['id'] == $video_id) {
           $is_available = true;
           break;
       }
    }
    return $is_available;
}

Answer 14

Here's a quick simple faster solution using the HEAD request method.

function check_youtube_video_exists($video_url) {

    if (strpos($video_url, 'youtube.com') > 0 || strpos($video_url, 'youtu.be') > 0) {
        $video_url = 'https://www.youtube.com/oembed?url='. $video_url .'&format=json';
    }

    $headers = @get_headers($video_url);

    return (strpos($headers[0], '200') > 0) ? true : false;
}

Check your YouTube URL like so:

if (check_remote_video_exists('YOUR_YOUTUBE_VIDEO_URL')) {
    // video exists, do stuff
} else {
    // video does not exist, do other stuff
}

Answer 15

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQVoAWSP7k4  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQVoAWSP7k4&feature=popular  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McNqjYiFmyQ&feature=related&bhablah  
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bQVoAWSP7k4

var matches = $('#videoUrl').val().match(/http:\/\/(?:www\.)?youtube.*watch\?v=([a-zA-Z0-9\-_]+)/);
if (matches) {
    alert('valid');
} else {
    alert('Invalid');
}