C# YouTube : Google API
This week we had the opportunity to do some integration with YouTube for one of our clients - upload, edit, remove and displaying
videos all in the "comfort" of their own website.
Initially we thought that we will probably need to do this using raw calls etc to YouTube
(which we'd probably wrap into some sexy reusable classes), but luckily Google did all the work for us already via
their
data API - in a few lines of code one can
for example upload a video to YouTube
(like you will see in the following post).
Before you continue, you need to download the
Google Data API (if you
didn't already) and
register for a YouTube developer key, you'll also need
a username and password to access YouTube.
Lets jump into some code...
You'll need to add the following Google API references to your solution.
The following namespaces
(located within the added references) are required:
using Google.YouTube;
using Google.GData.YouTube;
using Google.GData.Client;
using Google.GData.Extensions;
using Google.GData.Extensions.MediaRss;
Next you need to create an instance of the YouTubeRequestSettings class to which we pass all the settings required to connect to YouTube:
YouTubeRequestSettings settings = new YouTubeRequestSettings("applicationName", "developerKey", "userName", "passWord");
YouTubeRequest request = new YouTubeRequest(settings);
Video newVideo = new Video();
newVideo.Title = "Test";
newVideo.Tags.Add(new MediaCategory("Animals", YouTubeNameTable.CategorySchema));
newVideo.Description = "Testing Testing Testing";
newVideo.YouTubeEntry.Private = false;
newVideo.YouTubeEntry.MediaSource = new MediaFileSource("C:\\test.wmv", "video/x-ms-wmv");
request.Upload(newVideo);
In the preceding snippet we pass our settings instance to a YouTubeRequest to which we pass a video
using its Upload method.
Notice the Tags collection to which we add a MediaCategory - we're required to add our video to at least
one category, a list of available categories can be found
here.
When uploading large files to YouTube it might be prudent to set the YouTubeRequest's timeout, like see in the
following piece of code.
((GDataRequestFactory)request.Service.RequestFactory).Timeout = 9999999;
public IEnumerable<Video> ListMyVideos()
{
YouTubeRequest request = new YouTubeRequest(settings);
YouTubeQuery query = new YouTubeQuery(YouTubeQuery.DefaultUploads);
Feed<Video> feed = request.Get<Video>(query);
return feed != null ? feed.Entries : null;
}
In the snippet above we essentially create a simple query that returns all the videos the
current logged in user
(via YouTubeRequestSettings) uploaded to YouTube.
Get a video
public Video GetMyVideo(string uploader, string videoID)
{
YouTubeRequest request = new YouTubeRequest(settings);
Uri uri = new Uri(String.Format("http://gdata.YouTube.com/feeds/api/users/{0}/uploads/{1}", uploader, videoID));
return request.Retrieve<Video>(uri);
}
In the preceding snippet we pass our YouTube username
(minus its domain) and the ID of the video we wish
to retrieve
(you can get a list of videoID's in the snippet ahead of this one).
The video object returned by the Retrieve method
(on the request), contains all kinds of useful information about
the retrieved video e.g. length of the video, links to generated thumbnails etc.
Remove a video
public void Remove(Video video)
{
YouTubeRequest request = new YouTubeRequest(settings);
request.Delete(video);
}
To remove your video from YouTube is quite simple, simply pass the video retrieved from the GetVideo method
(like seen in this
post) to the Remove method seen above.
Update a video
public void Update(Video video, string title, string description)
{
YouTubeRequest request = new YouTubeRequest(settings);
video.Title = title;
video.Description = description;
request.Update(video);
}
Similar to the Remove method, we simply pass our retrieved video to the YouTubeRequest object.
Display a video
Displaying a video is probably the easiest part in the whole process - in the past we used object/embed tags, but I noticed that
YouTube migrated to iframes like seen in the following snippet.
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/somevideoID" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Note: You can disable "related videos", by passing rel=0 to the url in the iframe eg. http://www.youtube.com/embed/somevideoID?rel=0 or even default
it to HD by passing hd=1 to the url eg. http://www.youtube.com/embed/somevideoID?hd=1.
Above that, there is tons of customizations & settings we can set within YouTube itself for our uploaded videos - disabling comments, visibility
(private / public / unlisted)
etc.
Have fun...
Additional Reading
Developer's YouTube Guide for .NET
Posted by - Christoff Truter
Date - 2011-03-12 08:37:51
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