Extracting a string from a string where the string is variable

Question

I want to get the individual ID from a youtube link so that I can use it later on, to pull other information such as its thumbnail image and insert it into the embedded iframe.

I notice there that all, I hope, of the urls on youtube start http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= Unique video ID and then depending on a few things can end something like &list=RD02M5u5zXVmoHM. But the unique id always has a & after it and the watch?v= before. Is this the best way to do it? Have a written this correctly?

$link=$_POST['link'];
$link_id=str_replace('http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=', '', $link);
$link_id=strstr($link_id, '&', true);

This comes from form data. Is there anything other variables from youtube URLs I may encounter?

[Possible duplicate](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6556559/youtube-api-extract-video-id) — Jamie Schembri, Apr 29 '13 at 19:30
So it is a little so simple what I have written. The accepted answer on that post is great. Thank you — Adam Brown, Apr 29 '13 at 19:34

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 29 '13 at 19:38

A combination of parse_url() and parse_str() would be a simpler way where PHP handles the dirty work for you. Example:

$video_id = false;

$url_parts = parse_url($link);
$query_params = array();

if (isset($url_parts['query']))
{
    parse_str($url_parts['query'], $query_params);
}

if (isset($query_params['v']))
{
    $video_id = $query_params['v'];
}

And now $video_id contains the ID you need.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 29 '13 at 19:40

1

What you want to do is use: http://php.net/pase_url and http://php.net/parse_str like this:

<?php
$info = parse_url("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA57FOJSdM8");
parse_str($info["query"], $query);
print_r($query);

// Outputs: Array ( [v] => DA57FOJSdM8 )

answered Apr 29 '13 at 19:40

Get Off My Lawn

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so the final result is an array? What does the ['query'] part do here? – Adam Brown Apr 29 '13 at 19:45
What function can I use to put the [v] of the array into a string, I can't work out which one – Adam Brown Apr 29 '13 at 19:54
you can use `echo $query["v"];` or assign it to a variable `$v = $query["v"];` – Get Off My Lawn Apr 29 '13 at 19:55

Extracting a string from a string where the string is variable

2 Answers2