Youtube API to get Video details of a Playlist in PHP

We will be using Google YouTube API to connect and fetch data. Read more on Google Developers YouTube API

Use your own YouTube API while using this script. Check the demo of the script showing Tkinter video list here.

Current approach: keep the API key outside public source code, request up to 50 playlist items per call, and continue with nextPageToken until the API stops returning one.

Current PHP example using cURL

<?php
$apiKey = getenv('YOUTUBE_API_KEY');
$playlistId = 'YOUR_PLAYLIST_ID';
$pageToken = '';

do {
    $query = http_build_query([
        'part' => 'snippet,contentDetails',
        'maxResults' => 50,
        'playlistId' => $playlistId,
        'key' => $apiKey,
        'pageToken' => $pageToken,
    ]);

    $ch = curl_init('https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems?' . $query);
    curl_setopt_array($ch, [
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
        CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 10,
        CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
    ]);
    $json = curl_exec($ch);
    if ($json === false) {
        throw new RuntimeException(curl_error($ch));
    }
    curl_close($ch);

    $data = json_decode($json, true, flags: JSON_THROW_ON_ERROR);
    foreach ($data['items'] ?? [] as $item) {
        $title = $item['snippet']['title'] ?? '';
        $videoId = $item['snippet']['resourceId']['videoId'] ?? '';
    }
    $pageToken = $data['nextPageToken'] ?? '';
} while ($pageToken !== '');
?>

Developing the script in PHP

Looping through all the videos of the playlist is done by reading and passing the nextPageToken value in each successive loops. Once the last page is reached, no value is returned by nextPageToken.
At the end of each loop we will check the length of the value of nextPageToken and then terminate the loop of it is not available.

do{
$x="https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems?
part=snippet%2CcontentDetails&maxResults=20&
playlistId=PLzz7R3Slbh5SBgyevCsjVXXygbWZCAPTa&
key=YOUR_API_KEY&pageToken=$p_token";

$json = file_get_contents($x);
$playlist = json_decode($json);
//echo $obj->items;
//echo var_dump($playlist);
echo "<hr>";
$i=0;
foreach($playlist->items as $item) {        

//print($item->snippet->publishedAt); // working 
//print($item->snippet->resourceId->videoId); // working 
//print($item->snippet->thumbnails->default->url); // working

print"<hr>";
$title=$item->snippet->title;
$v_id= $item->snippet->resourceId->videoId;
$thumb=$item->snippet->thumbnails->medium->url;
$i=$i+1;
} // end of foreach loop 
echo $playlist->pageInfo->totalResults;
echo "<br>";
echo $playlist->pageInfo->resultsPerPage;
echo "<br>";
echo $playlist->nextPageToken;
echo "<br>";
echo "Total ".$i;
$next=$playlist->nextPageToken;
}while(strlen($next)>10);

The playlistItems endpoint allows up to 50 results per request. For additional results, pass the returned page token to the next request.

$p_token=$_GET['p_token'];
$x="https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems?
part=snippet%2CcontentDetails&maxResults=20&
playlistId=PLzz7R3Slbh5SBgyevCsjVXXygbWZCAPTa&
key=YOUR_API_KEY&pageToken=$p_token";

$json = file_get_contents($x);
$playlist = json_decode($json);

//$i=0;
//echo $playlist->pageInfo->totalResults;
//echo $playlist->pageInfo->resultsPerPage;

$next=$playlist->nextPageToken;
$prev=$playlist->prevPageToken;
$n_links='';
if(strlen($prev)>10){
$n_links.= "<a href=tkinter-video-paging.php?p_token=$prev 
class='btn btn-outline-secondary'><span aria-hidden='true'>«</span> Previous</a>  ";
}
if(strlen($next)>10){
	$n_links.= " <a href=tkinter-video-paging.php?p_token=$next
 class='btn btn-outline-secondary' > Next <span aria-hidden='true'>»</span></a>";
}
echo $n_links;
echo "<ul class='list-group'>";
foreach($playlist->items as $item) {        


$title=$item->snippet->title;
$v_id= $item->snippet->resourceId->videoId;
$thumb=$item->snippet->thumbnails->medium->url;
echo "<li class='list-group-item d-flex justify-content-between align-items-center'>$title 
<a href=https://youtu.be/$v_id target=new>
<img src=https://i.ytimg.com/vi/$v_id/mqdefault.jpg  class='img-fluid' alt='quixote'></a>
</li>";
$i=$i+1;
}
echo "</ul>";
echo "Total ".$i."<br>";
echo $n_links;

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Subhendu Mohapatra

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Data from Youtube Playlist

Current PHP example using cURL

Developing the script in PHP

Subhendu Mohapatra