What is the method to retrieve a YouTube video's thumbnail via the YouTube API?

Other Questions API
1

I want to know if it’s possible to extract the thumbnail image from a YouTube video using PHP and cURL, given the URL of the video. Are there specific steps or API endpoints I should use to achieve this?

2

Absolutely, you can get a YouTube video’s thumbnail using PHP and cURL by hitting the YouTube API. Here's a basic guide:

  1. Ensure you have an API Key from Google Developers Console.
  2. Use the YouTube Data API v3, specifically the "videos" endpoint.

Here's a simple PHP code snippet to fetch the thumbnail URL:

$videoId = "YOUR_VIDEO_ID"; $apiKey = "YOUR_API_KEY"; $url = "https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?id=$videoId&key=$apiKey&part=snippet";

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$data = json_decode($response, true);
$thumbnailUrl = $data[‘items’][0][‘snippet’][‘thumbnails’][‘default’][‘url’];

Replace YOUR_VIDEO_ID and YOUR_API_KEY with actual values. The returned $thumbnailUrl is the thumbnail image URL.

3

In addition to Alice45's excellent overview, let me offer an alternative way to obtain YouTube video thumbnails using PHP, without relying on the YouTube API, which can simplify things if you only need the thumbnail and not additional data.

Each YouTube video comes with a set of standard thumbnails that are accessibly directly. Here's a method utilizing the video URL:

  1. Extract the video ID directly from the YouTube URL. You typically get this from the URL parameter, for example, for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ, the video ID is dQw4w9WgXcQ.
  2. Construct the URL for the thumbnail. YouTube provides different sizes for thumbnails:
  • Default: https://img.youtube.com/vi/{VIDEO_ID}/default.jpg
  • High quality: https://img.youtube.com/vi/{VIDEO_ID}/hqdefault.jpg
  • Medium quality: https://img.youtube.com/vi/{VIDEO_ID}/mqdefault.jpg
  • Standard: https://img.youtube.com/vi/{VIDEO_ID}/sddefault.jpg
  • Maxres: https://img.youtube.com/vi/{VIDEO_ID}/maxresdefault.jpg

Here's a simple PHP function to get a default thumbnail:

function getYouTubeThumbnail($videoId) { return "https://img.youtube.com/vi/" . $videoId . "/default.jpg"; }

$videoId = “dQw4w9WgXcQ”;
$thumbnailUrl = getYouTubeThumbnail($videoId);
echo "Thumbnail URL: " . $thumbnailUrl;

This approach avoids API quotas and is efficient if you only need the thumbnail images for display.