YouTube api v3 get video category - php

Question

I'm working on a migration of the v2 implementation to v3, but I'm having some difficulty understanding how is API v3 segmented. I'm trying to get the video details from the API but for example, I'm unable to find where the video Category name is stored.
In the v2 implemetation I have:
$title = $info->entry->title->{'$t'};
$content = nl2br($info->entry->{'media$group'}->{'media$description'}->{'$t'});
and also
$info->entry->category
How would I translate this to the v3 implementation?
currently the api (v2) is quering this:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/
What is the v3 equivalent?
This is a PHP implementation btw.
thanks in advance

Answer 1

In V3, you don't query feeds, but instead query RESTful endpoints. So in your case, if you already know the videoIDs of the videos you want, you'll hit the videos->list endpoint, like this:
https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?part=snippet&id={comma separated list of video IDs}&key={YOUR_API_KEY}
The resultant json packet will have an 'items' list; each 'item' has a 'categoryId'.
Note that, to get details about the category ID itself, you can use the videoCategories->list endpoint, like this:
https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videoCategories?part=snippet&id={comma separated list of ids}&key={YOUR_API_KEY}
The categories don't change all that often, so you can likely cache a lot of this data, but it is sometimes helpful to have your app keep up on the category details as that API also returns things like the auto-generated channel ID for the category, localized info (what the title of the category is in other languages and other regions), etc.
If you DON'T already have the videoIDs, you cannot use the videos->list endpoint, but instead must use the search->list endpoint. This gives you access to use lots of parameters to filter your search ... all are described here:
https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/search/list
The problem with this, however, is that the results of the search endpoint do NOT give you the categoryID, so currently you'd have to aggregate all the videoIDs from your search result and do a call to the videos->list endpoint with those ids to get the categories.