Question

How do you formulate an HTTP request to the YouTube API to get the playing duration of a particular YouTube video?

Asked by: schlaff

How do you formulate an HTTP request to the YouTube API to get the duration of a particular YouTube video?

I am aware that it is possible to extract the playing duration from the webpage which plays the YouTube.  However, I am working within a programing environment (LSL) which only lets me see the first few hundred characters of a webpage.  For this reason I need a API call which returns the duration of the video and little else in the way of extraneous information.  

Thanks for your anticipated help.

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Asked On
2009-02-26 at 18:29:18ID24182523
Tags

YouTube API

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General Multi-Media Software

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Web Languages/Standards

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Answers

 

by: abelPosted on 2009-02-27 at 10:22:09ID: 23758361

The HTTP request is not so hard, you can just build up a request for a query of a video, but unfortunately, as you may deduct from the sample answer below (and that's for only one video), there's a lot of data involved in the response of the youtube API.

If you cannot get more than the first couple of bytes of a web page, is it possible to call into an external dll/exe/lib that has more possibilities? You could write a simple C++ app or java app (or whatever language you can use), and let that do the web request and filter the atom/xml response.

This response comes from a query like the following HTTP request:

GET /feeds/api/videos?q=zS5LRRsNYZk
GData-Version: 2
X-GData-Client: ytapi-google-jsdemo
Content-Type: application/atom+xml
Cache-Control: no-cache

and it responded with the following http headers (already quite large):


200 OK
X-GData-User-Country: NL
Content-Type: application/atom+xml; charset=UTF-8; type=feed
Expires: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:14:12 GMT
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:14:12 GMT
Cache-Control: private, max-age=1800, no-transform
Vary: *
GData-Version: 2.0
Etag: W/"AkMBQ30_eyp7ImA9WxVWF0g."
Content-Language: en-US
Last-Modified: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:14:12 GMT
Content-Encoding: gzip
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Server: GFE/2.0

Alternatively, if this is not an option in LSL / Second Life, then your best bet is to create a simple webpage yourself that responds to simple queries from your LSL application. It's not that hard to create such a filter/pass-through web site.

Sorry that I don't have much better information for you. The API returns an Atom feed (or RSS) and the info is rather a lot. You can test if for yourself here (if you haven't already): http://gdata.youtube.com/demo/index.html.

-- Abel --

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' xmlns:openSearch='http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/' xmlns:gml='http://www.opengis.net/gml' xmlns:georss='http://www.georss.org/georss' xmlns:media='http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/' xmlns:batch='http://schemas.google.com/gdata/batch' xmlns:yt='http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007' xmlns:gd='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005' gd:etag='W/"AkMBQ30_eyp7ImA9WxVWF0g."'>
  <id>tag:youtube.com,2008:videos</id>
  <updated>2009-02-27T18:14:12.343Z</updated>
  <category scheme='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind' term='http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007#video'/>
  <title>YouTube Videos matching query: zS5LRRsNYZk</title>
  <logo>http://www.youtube.com/img/pic_youtubelogo_123x63.gif</logo>
  <link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.youtube.com'/>
  <link rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#feed' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?client=ytapi-google-jsdemo'/>
  <link rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#batch' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/batch?client=ytapi-google-jsdemo'/>
  <link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?q=zS5LRRsNYZk&start-index=1&max-results=25&client=ytapi-google-jsdemo'/>
  <link rel='service' type='application/atomsvc+xml' href='http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?alt=atom-service'/>
  <author>
    <name>YouTube</name>
    <uri>http://www.youtube.com/</uri>
  </author>
  <generator version='2.0' uri='http://gdata.youtube.com/'>YouTube data API</generator>
  <openSearch:totalResults>1</openSearch:totalResults>
  <openSearch:startIndex>1</openSearch:startIndex>
  <openSearch:itemsPerPage>25</openSearch:itemsPerPage>
  <entry gd:etag='W/"D0YMSX47eCp7ImA9WxVWFkU."'>
    <id>tag:youtube.com,2008:video:zS5LRRsNYZk</id>
    <published>2006-05-29T21:03:24.000Z</published>
    <updated>2009-02-26T21:53:08.000Z</updated>
    <category scheme='http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007/keywords.cat' term='Consolation'/>
    <category scheme='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind' term='http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007#video'/>
    <category scheme='http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007/keywords.cat' term='Liszt'/>
    <category scheme='http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007/keywords.cat' term='Classic'/>
    <category scheme='http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007/keywords.cat' term='Horowitz'/>
    <category scheme='http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007/categories.cat' term='Music' label='Music'/>
    <category scheme='http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007/keywords.cat' term='Piano'/>
    <title>Horowitz plays Liszt Consolation No. 3</title>
    <content type='application/x-shockwave-flash' src='http://www.youtube.com/v/zS5LRRsNYZk&f=videos&c=ytapi-google-jsdemo&app=youtube_gdata'/>
    <link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS5LRRsNYZk'/>
    <link rel='http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007#video.responses' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/zS5LRRsNYZk/responses?client=ytapi-google-jsdemo'/>
    <link rel='http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007#video.related' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/zS5LRRsNYZk/related?client=ytapi-google-jsdemo'/>
    <link rel='http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007#mobile' type='text/html' href='http://m.youtube.com/details?v=zS5LRRsNYZk'/>
    <link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/zS5LRRsNYZk?client=ytapi-google-jsdemo'/>
    <author>
      <name>Sissco</name>
      <uri>http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/sissco</uri>
    </author>
    <media:group>
      <media:title type='plain'>Horowitz plays Liszt Consolation No. 3</media:title>
      <media:description type='plain'>Horowitz plays Liszt!</media:description>
      <media:keywords>Horowitz, Liszt, Consolation, Piano, Classic</media:keywords>
      <yt:duration seconds='238'/>
      <yt:videoid>zS5LRRsNYZk</yt:videoid>
      <yt:uploaded>2006-05-29T21:03:24.000Z</yt:uploaded>
      <media:player url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS5LRRsNYZk'/>
      <media:category label='Music' scheme='http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007/categories.cat'>Music</media:category>
      <media:credit role='uploader' scheme='urn:youtube'>Sissco</media:credit>
      <media:content url='http://www.youtube.com/v/zS5LRRsNYZk&f=videos&c=ytapi-google-jsdemo&app=youtube_gdata' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' medium='video' isDefault='true' expression='full' duration='238' yt:format='5'/>
      <media:content url='rtsp://rtsp2.youtube.com/CjcLENy73wIaLgmZYQ0bRUsuzRMYDSANFEITeXRhcGktZ29vZ2xlLWpzZGVtb0gGUgZ2aWRlb3MM/0/0/0/video.3gp' type='video/3gpp' medium='video' expression='full' duration='238' yt:format='1'/>
      <media:content url='rtsp://rtsp2.youtube.com/CjcLENy73wIaLgmZYQ0bRUsuzRMYESARFEITeXRhcGktZ29vZ2xlLWpzZGVtb0gGUgZ2aWRlb3MM/0/0/0/video.3gp' type='video/3gpp' medium='video' expression='full' duration='238' yt:format='6'/>
      <media:thumbnail url='http://i.ytimg.com/vi/zS5LRRsNYZk/2.jpg' height='97' width='130' time='00:01:59'/>
      <media:thumbnail url='http://i.ytimg.com/vi/zS5LRRsNYZk/1.jpg' height='97' width='130' time='00:00:59.500'/>
      <media:thumbnail url='http://i.ytimg.com/vi/zS5LRRsNYZk/3.jpg' height='97' width='130' time='00:02:58.500'/>
      <media:thumbnail url='http://i.ytimg.com/vi/zS5LRRsNYZk/hqdefault.jpg' height='360' width='480'/>
    </media:group>
    <yt:statistics viewCount='447111' favoriteCount='2784'/>
    <gd:rating min='1' max='5' numRaters='1237' average='4.89'/>
    <gd:comments>
      <gd:feedLink href='http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/zS5LRRsNYZk/comments?client=ytapi-google-jsdemo' countHint='553'/>
    </gd:comments>
  </entry>
</feed>

                                              
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by: schlaffPosted on 2009-04-17 at 18:24:46ID: 31551963

Thanks for your help.  I went and taught myself PHP and bit the bullet and went outside of SL for my solution.  Thanks very much for your help.

On a somewhat unrelated note, do you, by any chance, know how to formulate a cURL request to pass through to the user an MP4 file residing on the Web?  If so, I'd love to know how to do that.

 

by: abelPosted on 2009-04-17 at 18:51:15ID: 24173131

> Thanks for your help.

you're welcome. Glad you found a way.

>  do you, by any chance, know how to formulate a cURL request to pass through to the user an MP4 file residing on the Web?

I'm afraid I can't help you there, I have to dive into curl myself to find that out. Your best bet is on the PHP zone (and PHP is too long ago to be fresh in my memory).

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