How to validate youtube video ids? - validation

Question

I want to validate youtube video ids sbumitted in the URL to one of my sites before accessing the Youtube API, but I don't know what the allowed characters are in such an id. I see people on the net guessing it can contain numbers and characters, but I haven't yet seen an official specification of these video ids.
Is there one?

Answer 1

See this thread for official info.
you can hit this: http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/VIDEO_ID (Page now returns: "No longer available".)
and determine if the video is valid based on response
There's no way you can check the validity of the ID with RegEx, since not all alpha-numeric values are valid ID's.
p.s. i'm pretty sure i saw "dashes" in video ID's
p.p.s. "underscore" is a valid character also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrGk0AuFd_9
[a-zA-Z0-9_-]{11} is the regex (source), but there's no guarantee that the video will be there even if regex is valid

Answer 2

With v3 of the YouTube API I achieved this by calling:
GET https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?part=id&id=Tr5WcGSDqDg&key={YOUR_API_KEY}
This returns something like:
{
"kind": "youtube#videoListResponse",
"etag": "\"dc9DtKVuP_z_ZIF9BZmHcN8kvWQ/P2cGwKgbH6EYZAGxiKCZSH8R1KY\"",
"pageInfo": {
"totalResults": 1,
"resultsPerPage": 1
},
"items": [{
"kind": "youtube#video",
"etag": "\"dc9DtKVuP_z_ZIF9BZmHcN8kvWQ/Rgd0_ApwigPcJHVX1Z2SIQ5FJtU\"",
"id": "Tr5WcGSDqDg"
}]
}
So you can just do a check:
if(json.hasOwnProperty('pageInfo') && json.pageInfo.totalResults === 1) {
if(items[0].kind==='youtube#video') {
//valid video ID
}
}

Answer 3

If you are looking for a quicker and more scalable solution I would say to use REGEX with some logging/fallback for errors to be pro-active if YouTube changes their ID in the future.
I've been working with the YouTube API for a while now, dealing with millions of videos. Looping through them, I found this to be the most ideal:
/^[A-Za-z0-9_-]{11}$/
A more detailed example say in PHP:
public static function validId($id) {
return preg_match('/^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]{11}$/', $id) > 0;
}

Answer 4

I solved this issue in the same way Roman recommended. In my helper:
Be sure to include your requires at the top of the file:
require "net/http"
require "uri"
Then:
def validate_id(youtube_id)
uri = URI.parse("http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/#{ youtube_id }")
http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri.request_uri)
response = http.request(request)
%Q{ #{response.code} }
end
Be sure there is no white space between the brackets in "#{response.code}"
Lastly, compare it to the desired response:
def youtube_data(youtube_id)
if validate_id(youtube_id) == "200"
#video is good code
else %Q{ Video is no longer valid }
end
end

Answer 5

Here is a simple implementation in JavaScript:
async function validVideoId(id) {
const url = "http://img.youtube.com/vi/" + id + "/mqdefault.jpg";
const { status } = await fetch(url);
if (status === 404) return false;
return true;
}
console.log(validVideoId('60ItHLz5WEA'));

Answer 6

I just look to see if it is alphanumeric with possible dash or not. You might want to look into oEmbed, you can query YouTube to see if the ID is a valid video or not.

Answer 7

Here is a simple implementation of Roman's approach in PHP:
function validYoutube($id){
$id = trim($id);
if (strlen($id) === 11){
$file = #file_get_contents('http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/'.$id);
return !!$file;
}
return false;
}
And here are the tests:
echo validYoutube('Nv7U6_WhqvQ');
echo validYoutube('Nv7U6_Whqvf');
echo validYoutube('Nv7U6_Whqzz');

Answer 8

I think this works for checking if the video exists or not. Other validation can be done using REGEX as mentioned above. (Implemented using PHP)
public function verifyVideoID($videoID) {
parse_str(file_get_contents("http://youtube.com/get_video_info?el=detailpage&video_id=".$videoID), $info);
if (isset($info['errorcode'])) {
$response = ['response' => false];
return response()->json($response);
} else {
$response = ['response' => true];
return response()->json($response);
}
}

Answer 9

Here's one I came up with from combining info from other answers here and elsewhere:
function validId($id) {
return preg_match('/^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]{11}$/', $id) > 0;
}
function isvalYtube($url) {
$purl = str_ireplace('www.', '', parse_url($url, PHP_URL_HOST));
if (!strpos($url, 'youtu.be/') && ($purl != 'youtu.be')) {
if (strpos($url, 'watch') && ($purl = 'youtube.com')) {
parse_str(parse_url($url, PHP_URL_QUERY), $id);
if (!empty($id['v'])) { return(validId($id['v']) ? true : false); } else { return false; }
}
} else {
if (!empty(basename($url))) { return(validId(basename($url)) ? true : false); } else { return false; }
}
}
echo isvalYtube($url) ? 'valid link' : 'invalid link';
First function checks if we're dealing with a valid Youtube video ID.
Second function simply checks if it's a valid youtube VIDEO LINK or VIDEO from PLAYLIST LINK, excluding channel links.
Note: It doesn't determine if it's an active video nor does it check if it exists or not. These functions act merely as Youtube video-link syntax checkers and should be treated as such.
Usage examples:
$url = 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_QBk4VwnIA';
echo isvalYtube($url) ? 'valid link' : 'invalid link';
//returns 'valid link'
$url = 'http://youtu.be/o_QBk4VwnIA';
echo isvalYtube($url) ? 'valid link' : 'invalid link';
//returns 'valid link'
$url = 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_QBk4VwnIA&feature=youtu.be';
echo isvalYtube($url) ? 'valid link' : 'invalid link';
//returns 'valid link'
$url = 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq3eLdixvCc&list=OLAK5uy_nvaYLo9AG_rZyqkXzYlkJfLjBuZS84bIU';
echo isvalYtube($url) ? 'valid link' : 'invalid link';
//returns 'valid link'
$url = 'https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMPQY9gW0hQ9e_-IdQUKEAw';
echo isvalYtube($url) ? 'valid link' : 'invalid link';
//returns 'invalid link'

Answer 10

Simple use this code:
public class HelloWorld{
public static void main(String []args){
String expression = "^.*((youtu.be"+ "\\/)" + "|(v\\/)|(\\/u\\/w\\/)|(embed\\/)|(watch\\?))\\??v?=?([^#\\&\\?]*).*"; // var regExp = /^.*((youtu.be\/)|(v\/)|(\/u\/\w\/)|(embed\/)|(watch\?))\??v?=?([^#\&\?]*).*/;
String video_url = "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as3tGTN2u98";
if (video_url.matches(expression)) {
System.out.println("It's valid");
}
}
}