Video Extraction API
The Video API automatically extracts detailed video information—including most metadata, thumbnail images, direct video URL and embed code from nearly any video page or video platform on the web.
Request
To use the Video API, perform a HTTP GET request on the following endpoint:
https://api.diffbot.com/v3/video
Provide the following arguments:
| Argument | Description |
|---|---|
token | Developer token |
url | Web page URL of the video to process (URL encoded) |
| Optional arguments | |
fields | Used to specify optional fields to be returned by the Video API. See the Fields section below. |
timeout | Sets a value in milliseconds to wait for the retrieval/fetch of content from the requested URL. The default timeout for the third-party response is 30 seconds (30000). |
callback | Use for jsonp requests. Needed for cross-domain ajax. |
proxy | Used to specify the IP address of a custom proxy that will be used to fetch the target page, instead of Diffbot's default IPs/proxies. (Ex: &proxy=168.212.226.204) |
proxyAuth | Used to specify the authentication parameters that will be used with the proxy specified in the &proxy parameter. (Ex: &proxyAuth=username:password) |
The fields argument
Use the fields argument to return optional fields in the JSON response. The default fields will always be returned. For nested arrays, use parentheses to retrieve specific fields, or * to return all sub-fields.
For example, to return links and meta (in addition to the default fields), your &fields argument would be:
&fields=links,meta
Response
Diffbot's V3 APIs return information about all identified objects on a submitted page.
Each V3 response includes a request object (which returns request-specific metadata), and an objects array, which will include the extracted information for all objects on a submitted page.
Objects in the Product API's objects array will include the following fields:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
type | Type of object (always video). |
pageUrl | URL of submitted page / page from which the video is extracted. |
resolvedPageUrl | Returned if the pageUrl redirects to another URL. |
title | Title of the video. |
text | Text description, if available, of the video. |
url | Direct link to source video file, if available. |
html | Embeddable HTML of the video (if available), typically an IFRAME or VIDEO object. |
embedUrl | Embeddable URL, if available. |
author | Video uploader or creator, if available. |
date | Date of extracted video, normalized in most cases to RFC 1123 (HTTP/1.1). |
duration | Duration in seconds of the Video. |
viewCount | Number of Video views, if available on the page. |
naturalHeight | Raw video height, if available, in pixels. |
naturalWidth | Raw video width, if available, in pixels. |
images | Array of images, if present within the video. |
↳url | Fully resolved link to image. If the image SRC is encoded as base64 data, the complete data URI will be returned. |
↳title | Description or caption of the image. |
mime | MIME type, if available, as specified by the Video's "Content-Type." |
humanLanguage | Returns the (spoken/human) language of the submitted page, using two-letter ISO 639-1 nomenclature. |
diffbotUri | Unique object ID. The diffbotUri is generated from the values of various Video fields and uniquely identifies the object. This can be used for deduplication. |
Optional fields, available using fields= argument | |
links | Returns a top-level object (links) containing all hyperlinks found on the page. |
meta | Returns a top-level object (meta) containing the full contents of page meta tags, including sub-arrays for OpenGraph tags, Twitter Card metadata, schema.org microdata, and -- if available -- oEmbed metadata. |
querystring | Returns any key/value pairs present in the URL querystring. Items without a discrete value will be returned as true. |
breadcrumb | Returns a top-level array (breadcrumb) of URLs and link text from page breadcrumbs. |
Example Response
{
"request": {
"pageUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNv3EZEUgok",
"api": "video",
"version": 3
},
"objects": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Create a Custom API Using Diffbot's Custom API Toolkit",
"text": "This demonstration shows how to create a completely custom API using Diffbot's Custom API Toolkit. In it we show how to extract the \"What's Hot\" / Trending links from http://www.mashable.com.",
"pageUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNv3EZEUgok",
"embedUrl": "http://www.youtube.com/v/VNv3EZEUgok?autohide=1&version=3",
"humanLanguage": "en",
"date": "Fri, 02 Aug 2013 07:00:00 GMT",
"url": "https://r5---sn-qxo7sn7r.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?signature=3F99256DF92E9095B47FAC373A4BAADC5DBF3D36.D840BFEA083EE15085D0FE1F2F4C724551E7A4D7&sver=3&fexp=911305%2C912108%2C916944%2C930666%2C932404%2C940000%2C947209%2C947215%2C948124%2C948900%2C952302%2C952901%2C953912%2C957103%2C957201%2C958603&ratebypass=yes&requiressl=yes&ipbits=0&sparams=id%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Cmm%2Cms%2Cmv%2Cratebypass%2Crequiressl%2Csource%2Cupn%2Cexpire&key=yt5&ip=146.148.32.139&itag=22&source=youtube&mv=u&ms=au&mm=31&mt=1415157849&id=o-AJ5iG1T6_yn-_qUHjcNok6XqTznNX6LXeagB6-mm8XQM&expire=1415179514&upn=wMziid6h3DY",
"author": "Diffbot",
"html": "<iframe width=\"459\" height=\"344\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/VNv3EZEUgok?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen></iframe>",
"mime": "video/mp4",
"duration": 343,
"naturalWidth": 1280,
"naturalHeight": 720,
"viewCount": 1000,
"images": [
{
"title": "Create a Custom API Using Diffbot's Custom API Toolkit",
"url": "http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VNv3EZEUgok/hqdefault.jpg",
}
],
"diffbotUri": "video|3|566075164"
}
]
}
Authentication
You can supply Diffbot with basic authentication credentials or custom HTTP headers (see below) to access intranet pages or other sites that require a login.
Basic Authentication
To access pages that require a login/password (using basic access authentication), include the username and password in your url parameter, e.g.: url=http%3A%2F%2FUSERNAME:PASSWORD@www.diffbot.com.
Custom HTTP Headers and JavaScript
See here for a full guide on using custom headers in direct API calls.
Custom headers
You can supply Diffbot APIs with custom HTTP headers that will be passed along when making requests to third-party sites. These can be used to define specific Referer, User-Agent, Cookie or any other values.
Custom headers should be sent as HTTP headers in your request to https://api.diffbot.com, and prepended with X-Forward-.
For instance, to send custom User-Agent, Referer and My-Custom-Header header values:
| Desired Header | Send to api.diffbot.com |
|---|---|
User-Agent:Diffbot | X-Forward-User-Agent:Diffbot |
Referer:diffbot.com | X-Forward-Referer:diffbot.com |
My-Custom-Header:CustomValue | X-Forward-My-Custom-Header:CustomValue |
Custom Javascript
Using the X-Evaluate custom header (sent as X-Forward-X-Evaluate), you can inject your own Javascript code into web pages. Custom Javascript will be executed once the DOM has loaded.
Custom Javascript should be provided as a text string and contained in its own function. You must also include the special functions start() and end() to indicate the beginning and end of your custom script. Once end() fires, the updated document will be processed by your chosen extraction API.
It's recommended that your end() function be offset using setTimeout (see JavaScript Timing Events) in order to accommodate your primary function processing. Additionally, if your custom Javascript requires access to Ajax-delivered content, it may be necessary to offset your entire function using setTimeout in order to delay the start of your processing.
The following sample X-Evaluate header waits one-half second after the DOM has loaded, enacts a click on the a.loadMore element, then waits 800 milliseconds before signaling the end():
function() {
start();
setTimeout(function() {
var loadMoreNode = document.querySelector('a.loadMore');
if (loadMoreNode != null) {
loadMoreNode.click();
setTimeout(function() {
end();
}, 800);
} else {
end();
}
}, 500);
}
Delivered as a string value as a custom header:
"X-Forward-X-Evaluate": "function() {start();setTimeout(function(){var loadMoreNode=document.querySelector('a.loadMore');if (loadMoreNode != null) {loadMoreNode.click();setTimeout(function(){end();}, 800);} else {end();}},500);}"
Note: X-Evaluate will only be executed if called from the API the rule resides in. If you have an X-Evaluate script in your Article API rule and make a request with the Analyze API that identifies the page as an article, the X-Evaluate will not be executed.
Posting Content
If your content is not publicly available (e.g., behind a firewall), you can POST markup directly to the Product API endpoint for analysis:
https://api.diffbot.com/v3/video?token=...&url=...
Please note that the url argument is still required, and will be used to resolve any relative links contained in the markup.
Provide the content to analyze as your POST body, and specify the Content-Type header as text/html.