
How can I add a YouTube search to my site?I'm addicted. First it was America's Funniest Home Videos, now it's YouTube. There are just too darn many hilarious videos on the site. What I really want, though, is to be able to add a YouTube search to my own site so people can easily find all the funny stuff there. Is that doable? This is becoming a habit, reverse engineering search engines on popular Web sites! you name the site, from eBay to Google, and I've written about how to add a search box for that particular site on your own website, blog or social network profile page. The good news is that it's a fun task, at least if you're a bit of an HTML geek like I am, and it's also a chance to dig into a high-powered Web site and see a bit about what they're doing behind the scenes. The first step with this task is always to go to the site and choose File --> View Source. It opens up and almost always you'll be terrified at how ugly things are. YouTube is, however, rather surprisingly different: ![]() Even with this nicely formatted source, it's still a bit tricky to identify the exact section of HTML that powers the search. Easiest solution is to search for <form, which produces the following: <form id="search-form" action="/results" method="get" name="searchForm">
<input id="search-term" name="search_query" type="text" onkeyup="goog.i18n.bidi.setDirAttribute(event,this)" value="" maxlength="128" /> <select class="search-type" name="search_type"> <option value="">Videos</option> <option value="search_users" >Channels</option> </select> <input id="search-button" type="submit" value="Search" /> </form> Truth be told, there's some superfluous material in this search form that makes it pretty on the YouTube page, but is really pretty irrelevant for a simple text search on your own site. Here's that same form with the extras all stripped out: <form action="/results" method="get">
<input name="search_query" type="text" maxlength="128" /> <select name="search_type"> <option value="">Videos</option> <option value="search_users">Channels</option> </select> <input type="submit" value="Search" /> </form> Almost there. We need to do one more thing: fix the "action" attribute since it's assuming that you're on the YouTube site but if the code's going to be on your own site, that assumption will be false. Easily done: <form action="http://www.youtube.com/results" method="get">
Now we're cookin'! To have the results open in a new window (a common request I see for my seach code) we'll add one more attribute to the form tag too: <form action="http://www.youtube.com/results" method="get" target="_blank">
Now here's the full code: <form action="http://www.youtube.com/results" method="get" target="_blank">
<input name="search_query" type="text" maxlength="128" /> <select name="search_type"> <option value="">Videos</option> <option value="search_users">Channels</option> </select> <input type="submit" value="Search" /> </form> and here it is in action: You can spiff it up further if you'd like, adding tiny YouTube logos as bling or whatever, but that basic code should give you the search you seek for your site, and good luck to you!
Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Stumble Upon
Categorized:
CGI Scripts and Web Site Programming
(Article 7919)
Tagged: google video, reverse engineering, search engines, youtube Previous: How to make an Apple Mighty Mouse a two-button mouse? Next: Can hackers read everything on my computer? Subscribe!
Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader. Do you have a way of making the results and movie play in the same window? Posted by: Please correct the error at April 11, 2008 5:29 PMThe only way of doing this is using frames! Unless you are good enough at PHP to send a GET request to the page, capture the HTML and echo it back on yours. (Seeing as you asked the question Im assuming you don't). You should create a new page containing Dave's search, include it on the frame you want within a frame and the searchw ill load in the frame...Remove Daves _blank target though =). Cheeeers, Darren Posted by: darren at April 14, 2008 3:17 AMJura, That wouldnt work - the method is how you propose the data to the page - it doesnt determine where it will be displayed. Posted by: Darren at April 24, 2008 5:37 AMExclent work ... is there anyway to preload the search with a word?? Posted by: cybill at November 25, 2008 4:35 PMYeah to preload the search with a word just use the tag value="yourword" in the <input name="search_query" type="text" maxlength="128" /> Im interested in hearing about displaying the results on my site using PHP if anyone can send me in the right direction to do that? I'm new to PHP but have a good grasp of it. It seems that my code has been extracted to prevent injection! Nice! What you want to do is put the command value="your word" in the same tag that begins with input name. It should go at the end of this tag just before the tag closes repacing "yourword" with the word you want to use and leaving it in inverted commas. Though if you want to do this you can get a widget from Google which will search only specific videos you want or display a list of your chosen videos etc. Google youtube widgets. Posted by: Ollie Barnett at December 29, 2008 12:24 PMcan you help on that tiny thing ? when i search in hebrew it gives question mark ?? results from my site. somehow from here it gives correct results. why is that? i have just copyied and paste to my html page and it gives ??? results. Posted by: mosho at February 5, 2009 3:23 AMhello, thank you Posted by: alveez at September 11, 2009 1:56 AMI have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...
I do have a comment, now that you mention it!
|
![]()
Search
Find just the answers you seek from among our 2300+ free tech support articles by using our Lijit search engine.
Help!
Subscribe to
Ask Dave Taylor!
Free Updates!
Sign up and get free weekly updates and special offers on books, seminars, workshops and more.
Articles and Reviews
Auctions and Online Shopping Blogs and RSS Feeds Building Web site traffic Business and Management Cell Phones and Mobile Phones CGI Scripts and Web Site Programming Computer and Internet Basics d) None of the Above HTML and CSS Industry News and Trade Shows Mac OS X Help MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Social Network Help Pay Per Click (PPC) Search Engine Optimization Shell Script Programming Sony PSP, MP3 Players, Etc. The Writing Business Unix and Linux Help Video Game Tips and Help Windows Help
Recent Entries
Book Links
|