Get YouTube Views with PHP or WordPress Shortcode

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Like everything Google, there’s very little that the YouTube API doesn’t offer. However, the following PHP function (and WordPress shortcode) will do nothing other than retrieve the view count given a video ID. Having just built a cool YouTube application I’ll be sure to post some code sometime in the future.

YouTube Video Count Shortcode

As a simple example, and only if used in WordPress, the shortcode of [ytviews video="B1a6VddQgxA"] will simply render the text of . The YouTube video ID as used in the shortcode can be found in the URL address bar of your browser (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1a6VddQgxA).

Video ID sourced from YouTube URL

Available Shortcode Attributes

video – This is the ID of the video you want to retrieve counts for
cache – How long you want to cache the results locally (on your end). Defaults to 12 hours. The API lags a little behind actual view.

You should copy the following code into your theme’s functions.php file or your custom shortcode plugin.

function getYoutubeViews($atts) {
    extract(shortcode_atts(array(
    'video' => '',
    'cache' => '43200' // 12 hours (60*60*12)
  ), $atts));
	$myYTviews = 'YTV_' . $video;
	$cachedposts = get_transient($myYTviews);
	if ($cachedposts !== false) {
	return $cachedposts;
	} else {
	$JSON = file_get_contents("https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?q=$video&alt=json");
	$JSON_Data = json_decode($JSON);
	$views = $JSON_Data->{'feed'}->{'entry'}[0]->{'yt$statistics'}->{'viewCount'};
	$return = $views;
    set_transient($myYTviews, $return, $cache);
   return $return;
 }
}
add_shortcode('ytviews','getYoutubeViews');

PHP Function

Used outside of WordPress, the following PHP function applies.

<?php
function get_youtube_views($video_ID) {
	$JSON = file_get_contents("https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?q={$video_ID}&alt=json");
	$JSON_Data = json_decode($JSON);
	$views = $JSON_Data->{'feed'}->{'entry'}[0]->{'yt$statistics'}->{'viewCount'};
	echo $views;
	}
get_youtube_views('B1a6VddQgxA');
?>

If you have any problems, please let me know.

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If you liked this article, you may also like:

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4. YouTube Thumbnails in WordPress Posts with Shortcode
5. [Shortcode] Insert Youtube videos into your blog with shortcode