YouTube Video Downloader Script in PHP

PHPZAG Team PHP

YouTube is the most popular videos sharing platform where we watched videos online. However, we often need to get those YouTube videos for offline uses. If you’re a PHP developer then definitely you’re looking for a PHP script to download YouTube videos on your local server. So here in this post, we will explain how easily you can create your own PHP script to download your favorite YouTube video.

Also, read:

At the end of this post, you will also see live demo of YouTube video download script and also download live demo source code.

As we know that YouTube didn’t provide any ways to get the raw video but still we can download it. As the player will always issue a HTTP request to http://youtube.com/get_video_id?video_id=THE_VIDEO_ID to get information about a specific video. The result of the request contains a URL-encoded string that has the video’s location. So, we will need to get that part first of video.


$vid = $_GET['vid']; // Youtube video ID
$vformat = $_GET['vformat']; // The MIME type of the video. e.g. video/mp4, video/webm, etc.
parse_str(file_get_contents("http://youtube.com/get_video_info?video_id=".$vid),$info);
$streams = $info['url_encoded_fmt_stream_map'];

Now we will get all the streams. As the stream is also different sets of URL-encoded data separated by a comma. In order to retrieve all the streams, we need to turn it into an array by using explode(‘,’,$streams).

$streams = explode(',',$streams);

Finally, we will need to loop through all the streams and get its data.

foreach($streams as $stream){
parse_str($stream,$data); //Now decode the stream
if(stripos($data['type'],$vformat) !== false){
$video = fopen($data['url'].'&signature='.$data['sig'],'r'); //the video
$file = fopen('video.'.str_replace($vformat,'video/',''),'w');
stream_copy_to_stream($video,$file);
fclose($video);
fclose($file);
echo 'Youtube Video Download finished! Now check downloaded file.';
break;
}
}

The complete PHP script to download YouTube videos:

<?php
$vid = $_GET['vid']; //the youtube video ID
$vformat = $_GET['vformat']; //the MIME type of the video. e.g. video/mp4, video/webm, etc.
parse_str(file_get_contents("http://youtube.com/get_video_info?video_id=".$vid),$info); //decode the data
$streams = $info['url_encoded_fmt_stream_map']; //the video's location info
$streams = explode(',',$streams);
foreach($streams as $stream){
parse_str($stream,$data); //decode the stream
if(stripos($data['type'],$vformat) !== false){ //We've found the right stream with the correct format
$video = fopen($data['url'].'&signature='.$data['sig'],'r'); //the video
$file = fopen('video.'.str_replace($vformat,'video/',''),'w');
stream_copy_to_stream($video,$file); //copy it to the file
fclose($video);
fclose($file);
echo 'Youtube Video Download finished! Now check the file.';
break;
}
}
?>

Now you can call it like this after you’ve put it to the server in  a PHP file:

http://localhost/PHP SCRIPT NAME.php?vid=THE YOUTUBE VIDEO ID&vformat=THE MIME TYPE OF THE VIDEO

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Here we have developed a complete YouTube video downloader script with the help of above. You can see this script in action from below live demo link.

Demo  Download

32 thoughts on “YouTube Video Downloader Script in PHP”

    1. Now We have updated script with live demo and script source to download and try it. I will solve your problem.

      Reply

    1. Thanks for query, I think the error you facing due to some other issue not related YouTube video download.

      Reply

    1. Thanks for comment, The script only download single videos, I will update script in future to download full list or channels.

      Reply

  5. hello, nice tutorial! but may i know how can i download the download code? like the live demo? thank you.

    Reply

  8. The code works fine but the only problem am getting is it just downloads the video to the server not client machine

    Reply

  9. its working fine in locally But in Live Website that code doesn’t work (It is restricted from playback on certain sites.)

    Reply

  13. thank bro you doing very great job script is 1000000000% working
    please make a php live chat and live video chat script with online show option thanks for giving a php youtube download script

    Reply

  15. Hello together,

    since today theres a new cipher … ill try to get it … if now maybe someone of you could help – would be nice!

    greetings

    Reply

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