youtube_video_id

This gem makes it easy to extract the YouTube video ID from a YouTube video url.

These urls come in various forms and it is not exactly trivial to get the video ID out of them. This is where this gem comes in.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'youtube_video_id'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install youtube_video_id

At first, don't forget to require the gem in your script or project after the installation.

require 'youtube_video_id'

If you have any YouTube url you can simply extract the video ID (if there is a valid one) with the "extract" method:

YoutubeVideoId.extract('https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMglC9A') # => 'YQHsXMglC9A'
YoutubeVideoId.extract('https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMg')     # => '' (ID too short and therefore not valid)

The method supports urls in these formats:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMglC9A
https://www.youtube.com/v/YQHsXMglC9A
https://www.youtube.com/embed/YQHsXMglC9A
https://www.youtube.com/user/SomeChannel#p/a/u/1/YQHsXMglC9A
https://youtu.be/YQHsXMglC9A
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMglC9A
https://m.youtube.com/v/YQHsXMglC9A

Additional parameters or fragment identifiers don't matter. The method knows how to handle those:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMglC9A&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=YQHsXMglC9A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMglC9A#t=0m15s

It's also not important whether a the url contains information about the protocol or not. The extract methods works with all variants:

youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMglC9A
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMglC9A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMglC9A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMglC9A

If you already have a string and want to check whether it could be a YouTube video ID you can use the method called 'youtube_video_id_is_valid?'. It returns either true or false:

YoutubeVideoId.youtube_video_id_is_valid?('YQHsXMglC9A') # => true
YoutubeVideoId.youtube_video_id_is_valid?('YQHsXMg')     # => false (ID too short and therefore not valid)

Please note that this method doesn't "really" check if an ID is valid in the sense that there actually EXISTS a video with this ID. Instead, the method checks if the given video ID "looks right" and could possibly be a valid Youtube video ID.

If you want to make sure whether there actually is a video for a given ID you'll have to consult the YouTube API.

If you have any valid urls that link to a YouTube video but for some reason don't work with this gem I would be happy to be notified!

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/krewast/youtube_video_id. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.