Here’s another little Rails code snippet for getting video details, this time from Youtube. The code simply retrieves an XML details object for a given video. Enjoy. . .

YOUTUBE_URL_REGEX = /(www.)?youtube\.com\/watch\?v=([^&]*)/i
url = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az-8Z1skhLs&feature=channel_page

begin
if YOUTUBE_URL_REGEX.match(url)
vid_id = YOUTUBE_URL_REGEX.match(resource_locator)[2]
youtube_url = "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/#{vid_id}"

response = Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(youtube_url))
results = Hash.from_xml(response.body)

@description = results["entry"]["group"]["description"]
@thumbnail_url = results["entry"]["group"]["thumbnail"][0]["url"]
end
rescue Exception => exc
# DNS failed...
end

See also: Getting Vimeo Video Information in JSON