garyshort.org

I noticed the YouTube site has an API so I've been playing around with it. Here's an example of how to call a YouTube API from C# to list the videos relating to golf.

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    //GS - Empty the buffer of anything written already
    Response.Clear();

    //GS - Call the YouTube api to list all videos for a tag
    string uri = "http://www.youtube.com/api2_rest?";
    uri += "method=youtube.videos.list_by_tag";
    uri += "&dev_id=YOUR_KEY_HERE";
    uri += "&tag=golf";

    XPathDocument xpd = null;
    try
    {
        xpd = new XPathDocument(uri);
    }
    catch (XmlException xe)
    {
        Response.Write("The following xml error occurred: " + 
            xe.Message);
        Response.End();
        return;
    }

    //GS - Create a navigator
    XPathNavigator xpn = xpd.CreateNavigator();

    //GS - Handle any errors
    XPathNodeIterator xniError = xpn.Select(@"/ut_response");
    xniError.MoveNext();
    if(xniError.Current.GetAttribute("status",String.Empty)=="fail")
    {
        //GS - Get the error
        string expression = "/ut_response/error/description";
        string errorText = xpn.SelectSingleNode(expression).InnerXml;

        //GS - Inform the user
        Response.Write("The YouTube API reported the " +
            "following error: " + errorText);
        Response.End();
        return;
    }

    //GS - No errors so get all the video elements returned
    try
    {
        XPathNodeIterator xni = 
            xpn.Select(@"/ut_response/video_list/video");

        //GS - Write out a heading
        Response.Write("<h1>Golfing Videos</h1>");

        //GS - Start an unordered list
        Response.Write("<ul>");

        //GS - For each video write thumb nail image and title
        string title = "";
        string url = "";
        string thumbUrl = "";

        while (xni.MoveNext())
        {
            title = xni.Current.SelectSingleNode(@"title").InnerXml;
            url = xni.Current.SelectSingleNode(@"url").InnerXml;
            thumbUrl = 
                xni.Current.SelectSingleNode(@"thumbnail_url").InnerXml;

            Response.Write("<li>");
            Response.Write("<img height='75' width='75' src='" + 
                thumbUrl + "' />");
            Response.Write("<br />");
            Response.Write("<a href='" + url + "'>" + title + "</a>");
            Response.Write("<p />");
            Response.Write("</li>");
        }

        //GS - Close the unordered list
        Response.Write("</ul>");

        //GS - Write to the browser
        Response.End();
    }
    catch (XPathException xpe)
    {
        Response.Write("The following XPath exception occurred: " 
            + xpe.Message);
        Response.End();
        return;
    }
}

Tags: YouTube, Mashup, C#

Print | posted on Thursday, June 15, 2006 12:06 PM