Getting title, description and number of views of a youtube video

Question

$youtube = simplexml_load_file('http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/wGG543FeHOE?v=2');
$title = $youtube->title;

This gets the title. But how could I get the viewcount and description? tried $youtube->description; and $youtube->views;

Answer 1

I suggest you to use the JSON output instead of the XML one.

You can get it by adding the alt=json parameter to your URL:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/wGG543FeHOE?v=2&alt=json

Then you have to load the json and parse it:

<?php
$json_output = file_get_contents("http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/wGG543FeHOE?v=2&alt=json");
$json = json_decode($json_output, true);

//This gives you the video description
$video_description = $json['entry']['media$group']['media$description']['$t'];

//This gives you the video views count
$view_count = $json['entry']['yt$statistics']['viewCount'];

//This gives you the video title
$video_title = $json['entry']['title']['$t'];
?>

Hope this helps.

UPDATE

To see what variables does the JSON output have, add the prettyprint=true parameter to the URL and open it in your browser, it will beautify the JSON output to make it more comprehensible:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/wGG543FeHOE?v=2&alt=json&prettyprint=true

Instead of browsing the URL you can just write

echo "<pre>";
print_r($json);
echo "</pre>";

after

$json = json_decode($json_output, true);

and it will print the formatted JSON output

Answer 2

My code:

$vId = "Jer8XjMrUB4";
$gkey = "AIzaSyCO5lIc_Jlrey0aroqf1cHXVF1MUXLNuR0";

$dur = file_get_contents("https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?part=snippet,contentDetails&id=".$vId."&key=".$gkey."");


$data = json_decode($dur, true);
foreach ($data['items'] as $rowdata) {
     $vTime = $rowdata['contentDetails']['duration'];
     $desc = $rowdata['snippet']['description'];
}


$interval = new DateInterval($vTime);
$vsec = $interval->h * 3600 + $interval->i * 60 + $interval->s;

if($vsec > 3600)
    $vsec = gmdate("H:i:s", $vsec);
else
    $vsec = gmdate("i:s", $vsec);

echo $vsec."--".$desc;

Result:

02:47--Following the critically acclaimed global smash hit X-Men: