How to get a Youtube channel RSS feed after 2015 April 20 (without v3 API)?

Php Problem Overview

Now that API v2 is gone, what would be a way to get a simple RSS feed of a channel, without v3 API? I'm open to Yahoo Pipes or any workaround that is simpler than creating an application for v3 API if the target is a feed reader. I only need an RSS feed. It was available publicly until now and it can cease any minute now (I think). So why not let access to it without an API key anymore.

Php Solutions

Solution 1 - Php

At RSS Reader section https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6098135?hl=en there is an option to export to an OPML file your subscriptions. Then, looking at the contents of the OPML you can extract the feeds, and the structure of each feed is:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=XXXX</pre>

So you could generate new feeds from this structure if you know the channel id. This kind of feeds are not getting the "https://youtube.com/devicesupport" error, so I expect they are going to keep working.

Solution 2 - Php

You can get the feeds like this:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNELID
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=USERNAME
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=YOUR_YOUTUBE_PLAYLIST_NUMBER

But the JSON format which used to be supported (with additional parameter &alt=JSON) is not supported anymore.

Additionally you can request for API key for public access to your YouTube videos from your developer console and get YouTube Videos, Playlists in JSON format like this:

- Get Channels: 
  https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=snippet%2CcontentDetails&forUsername={YOUR_USER_NAME}&key={YOUR_API_KEY}
- Get Playlists: 
  https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlists?part=snippet%2CcontentDetails&channelId={YOUR_CHANNEL_ID}&key={YOUR_API_KEY}
- Get Playlist Videos: 
  https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems?part=snippet%2CcontentDetails%2Cstatus&playlistId={YOUR_PLAYLIST_ID}&key={YOUR_API_KEY}

More information from YouTube v3 docs.

Solution 3 - Php

in you tube, click on the subscriptions on the left hand pane. This will open up all your subscriptions in the center of the page. Scroll down and you'll find a Export to RSS reader button which produces an xml file of all your subscriptions . I've done this and added it to my prefered rss reader feedly.

Solution 4 - Php

If you inspect any Youtube channel page, inside the <head> you will find an rss meta node like this:

<link rel="alternate" 
      type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS"     
      href="https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCn8zNIfYAQNdrFRrr8oibKw">

This should provide you with the data you need.

Solution 5 - Php

Get the channel id by searching for the attribute data-channel-external-id in the source code of the YouTube channel page. (thanks to helq).

This code will grab all video titles and ids from the feed and dump it into an array:

$channel_id = 'XXX'; // put the channel id here
$youtube = file_get_contents('https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id='.$channel_id);
$xml = simplexml_load_string($youtube, "SimpleXMLElement", LIBXML_NOCDATA);
$json = json_encode($xml);
$youtube = json_decode($json, true);
$yt_vids = array();
$count = 0;
foreach ($youtube['entry'] as $k => $v) {
	$yt_vids[$count]['id'] = str_replace('http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=', '', $v['link']['@attributes']['href']);
	$yt_vids[$count]['title'] = $v['title'];
	$count++;
}
print_r($yt_vids);

Solution 6 - Php

I've created a small PHP script that scrapes a Youtube URL for video links, and then outputs them as an atom feed: https://gist.github.com/Skalman/801436d9693ff03bc4ce

URLs such as https://www.youtube.com/user/scishow/videos work.

Caveats:

The tool doesn't scrape dates
Playlists won't include more than 100 videos
Playlists include the "play all" link
Author is correctly set only for channels (e.g. not playlists)
Maybe Youtube will block you if you use this too much (but hopefully the limits are high enough)
Likely several more...

Solution 7 - Php

There also exist RSS-Bridge witch can extract RSS feeds from a lot of services like Twitter, Google+, Flickr, Youtube, Identi.ca, etc.

source: https://github.com/sebsauvage/rss-bridge

demo server: https://bridge.suumitsu.eu/

Solution 8 - Php

try using this URL: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=USERNAME

Works fine for me.

Solution 9 - Php

From My Blog Post: http://tcodesblog.blogspot.com/search/label/howtofindyouryoutubechannelfeed

HOW TO FIND YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL FEED
In the old days, it was easy (2009) but now a days it is much harder to find it (2012-present). Here is a quick way to find your new feed from your YouTube Channel. Remember to follow the list correctly!

First find your channel id: You can do this by going to your YouTube Channel in the Dashboard
Copy the channel id: Your channel id can be found when visiting your YouTube Channel from within the Dashboard
Copy your channel id: Copy your channel id and replace channelidgoeshere below with your channel id: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=channelidgoeshere
Copy your entire YouTube Channel Feed and create a simplified feed: You can do this by creating a shorter feed link in FeedBurner at http://www.feedburner.com/ (Requires a Google account. Free to use.), which is also part of Google. Create a new feed (select I'm A Podcaster! to see your videos appear in the feed and to make your feed compatible with other feed readers such as: Digg Reader, Apple iPhone Apple News App, Apple iPhone Podcasts App, Feedly, etc.) -OR- edit an existing one by copying your entire YouTube Channel Feed and then click Save Feed Details as normal
Your YouTube Channel Feed now works and your videos can be seen in a feed file directly on your FeedBurner feed. Mine is at YouTube as a feed at https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCvFR6YxwnYfLt_QqRFk_r3g & at FeedBurner as http://feeds.feedburner.com/youtube/warrenwoodhouse with my videos that appear only as text format, as an example, since I need to update mine to show my videos. You can change different settings in FeedBurner and do other things so it's worth a try since it's free and easy to use. I highly recommend using FeedBurner or another feed creation service, however, FeedBurner is your best bet since it also includes cross-feed subscription service mechanism (USM - Universal Subscription Mechanism), which means your feed can be read from any compatible device such as a computer, mobile phone (with the correct app installed), via an older web browser (such as Internet Explorer which supports Web Slices & RSS/Atom/XML Feeds).

Your feed can also be opened up in Apple iPhone Apple News App & Apple iPhone Podcasts App on your Apple iPhone, Apple iPod Touch and Apple iPad if you've set the settings correctly to USM (Universal Subscription Mechanism). Once this is in effect, your feed can be viewed through different services and devices.

Your feed on FeedBurner allows you to create an Email Subscription, Headline Animator (which shows you how a link to the latest post) along with how many subscribers, Chiclets and other cool stuff.

I hope this answer proves useful and if you want to see some more cool awesome coding practices by me, please feel free to check out my T-Codes website at http://warrenwoodhouse.webs.com/codes for lots more stuff.

Solution 10 - Php

I have created an example Yahoo Pipes here.
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=6eeff0110a81f2ab94e8472620770b11

You can run this pipe by pressing "Run Pipe" without API Key filled. But you must provide your own API Key and channel id (which can be obtained via channels API) when cloned. Wanted to automate fetching channelId by YouTube username but not easy to pipe.

Solution 11 - Php

I've made a batch script that creates an RSS feed of your new subscription videos. You don't need an API key. The script uses 2 external tools: YouTube-DL and Xidel.

Anyway, read the following thread, and go to post 98 to download the script: http://code.google.com/p/gdata-issues/issues/detail?id=3946#c98

I hope someone codes this to php, python, javascript, powershell or bash.

Solution 12 - Php

I think there are some changes in youtube response so i make some changes to get channel id from rss feed using Curl.

$channel_id = 'XXXXXXXX'; // put the channel id here

//using curl
$url = 'https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id='.$channel_id.'&orderby=published';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'GET');
$response  = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$response=simplexml_load_string($response);
$json = json_encode($response);
$youtube= json_decode($json, true);

$count = 0;
if(isset($youtube['entry']['0']) && $youtube['entry']['0']!=array())
{
    foreach ($youtube['entry'] as $k => $v) {
        $yt_vids[$count]['id'] = str_replace('http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=', '', $v['link']['@attributes']['href']);
        $yt_vids[$count]['title'] = $v['title'];
        $count++;
    }
}
else
{
    $yt_vids[$count]['id']=str_replace('http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=', '', $youtube['entry']['link']['@attributes']['href']);
    $yt_vids[$count]['title']=$youtube['title'];
}
echo "<pre>";
print_r($yt_vids);

Solution 13 - Php

I used the below code to integrate Youtube Feed with wordpress custom field "ACF plugin" & FancyBox

    <?php  
    $channel_id = get_field('youtube_chanel_id'); //ACF text field
    if ($channel_id){ // if channel_id not empty -- START
    $youtube = file_get_contents('https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id='.$channel_id);
    $xml = simplexml_load_string($youtube, "SimpleXMLElement", LIBXML_NOCDATA);
    $json = json_encode($xml);
    $youtube = json_decode($json, true);
    	echo'<div class="col-md-12 youtube-videos-feed">';	
    	foreach ($youtube['entry'] as $k => $v) {
    		$id = str_replace(array("yt:video:"), "", $v['id']); // Remove "yt:video:" from ID value
    		//$date = $v['updated']; // video updated date (disabled for now)
    		$title = $v['title']; // video title
    		echo '<a class="with-video" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=',$id,'&autoplay=1&rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0&modestbranding=0" data-fancybox="videos"  data-caption="',$title,'" title="',$title,'" >
    			<div class="col-md-3 main-image post-image img-fancy">
    				<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/',$id,'/0.jpg" alt="',$title,'" >
    			</div>
    		</a>';
    	}
    	echo'</div>';
    } // if channel_id not empty -- END
 ?>

Solution 14 - Php

I found a Chrome extension named Youtube RSS-ify that injects an RSS icon on video, channel and navigation pages. It was just what I was looking for.

Icons look like this:

Solution 15 - Php

I would suggest using an excellent rss parser. Many of them are available, but you can try http://simplepie.org/, one of the best I used for my personal projects.

Its pretty well documented with some examples.

Usage example

Note:Used YouTube channel college humor, you can get it from the channel page itself

<?php
include_once('../autoloader.php');
// Parse it
$feed = new SimplePie();
$feed->set_feed_url('https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCPDXXXJj9nax0fr0Wfc048g');
$feed->enable_cache(false);
$feed->init();

$items = $feed->get_items();

foreach ($items as $item)
{
	echo $item->get_title() . "\n";
}

var_dump($feed->get_item_quantity());

Solution 16 - Php

Easiest way to get the channel id:

Open Subscription Manager (left panel, down below subscriptions) and click on the desired user.

The url will be in the form: https://www.youtube.com/channel/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

So the feed url should be:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Note: Better use channel ids rather than user names because user names may change.

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	Firsh - justifiedgrid.com	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Php	AitorF	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Php	Primoz Rome	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Php	Halo Jones	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Php	Matt Way	View Answer on Stackoverflow
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Solution 9 - Php	warrenwoodhouse	View Answer on Stackoverflow
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