Get the Youtube Video Thumbnail from Youtube video Url using PHP - php

Question

Lets say I have a youtube video url www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4CRkpBGQzU&feature=youtube_gdata&par1=1&par2=2
I want to get the video thumbnail -> i3.ytimg.com/vi/B4CRkpBGQzU/default.jpg
I just need a simple php script that I will input the $url and get the $img
If posible I would like to strip all other parameters and be left with just the
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4CRkpBGQzU as the $url

Answer 1

To extract the identifier from the following URL :
$url = 'www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4CRkpBGQzU&feature=youtube_gdata&par1=1&par2=2';
You can first use parse_url() to get the query string :
$queryString = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_QUERY);
var_dump($queryString);
Which, here, would give you :
string 'v=B4CRkpBGQzU&feature=youtube_gdata&par1=1&par2=2' (length=49)
And, then, use parse_str() to extract the parameters from that query string :
parse_str($queryString, $params);
var_dump($params);
Which would get you the following array :
array
'v' => string 'B4CRkpBGQzU' (length=11)
'feature' => string 'youtube_gdata' (length=13)
'par1' => string '1' (length=1)
'par2' => string '2' (length=1)
And, now, it's just a matter of using the v item from that array, injecting it into the thumbnail URL :
if (isset($params['v'])) {
echo "i3.ytimg.com/vi/{$params['v']}/default.jpg";
}
Which gives :
i3.ytimg.com/vi/B4CRkpBGQzU/default.jpg

Answer 2

<?php
function getYoutubeImage($e){
//GET THE URL
$url = $e;
$queryString = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_QUERY);
parse_str($queryString, $params);
$v = $params['v'];
//DISPLAY THE IMAGE
if(strlen($v)>0){
echo "<img src='http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/$v/default.jpg' width='150' />";
}
}
?>
<?php
getYoutubeImage("http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXWSlho1mMY&feature=plcp");
?>

Answer 3

$url = "http://youtube.com/watch?v=B4CRkpBGQzU";
$url = explode("&", $url);
$vidID = preg_match("|?v=(.*)|", $url);
$thumb_default = file_get_contents("http://img.youtube.com/vi/$vidID/default.jpg");
$thumb1 = file_get_contents("http://img.youtube.com/vi/$vidID/0.jpg");
$thumb2 = file_get_contents("http://img.youtube.com/vi/$vidID/1.jpg");
$thumb3 = file_get_contents("http://img.youtube.com/vi/$vidID/2.jpg");
$thumb4 = file_get_contents("http://img.youtube.com/vi/$vidID/3.jpg");

Answer 4

Assuming youtube doesn't change their format:
$thumb = preg_match('/watch\?v=(.*)&feature/',$url, $matches);
This will get you the 'B4CRkpBGQzU' part in $matches[1];

Answer 5

Getting the video ID from the URL
$url = "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0&feature=relate";
parse_str( parse_url( $url, PHP_URL_QUERY ) );
echo $vidID;//this is video id
Getting the images
$thumb1 = file_get_contents("http://img.youtube.com/vi/$vidID/0.jpg");
$thumb2 = file_get_contents("http://img.youtube.com/vi/$vidID/1.jpg");
$thumb3 = file_get_contents("http://img.youtube.com/vi/$vidID/2.jpg");
$thumb4 = file_get_contents("http://img.youtube.com/vi/$vidID/3.jpg");