Laravel Youtube API

This package provides a simple youtube api for your Laravel application. It is based on my non-laravel package Youtube API.

Installation

• Install the package via composer:

composer require michaelbelgium/laravel-youtube-api

• Optional: publish the config file and edit if u like:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=youtube-api-config

• This package uses the public disk of Laravel. Run this command to create a symbolic link to the public folder so that converted Youtube downloads are accessible:

php artisan storage:link

• Execute package migrations

php artisan migrate

Software

Depending on what driver you use - on the server where your laravel app is located, you'll need to install some packages.

• Install ffmpeg (+ libmp3lame - see this wiki for tutorial)
• install youtube-dl

API Usage

This package adds 3 api routes. The route prefix, /ytconverter/ in this case, is configurable.

• POST|GET /ytconverter/convert
• DELETE /ytconverter/{id}
• GET /ytconverter/search

Check the wiki page of this repository for more information about the routes.

To enable the search endpoint you need to acquire a Google API key on the Google Developer Console for the API "Youtube Data API v3". Use this key in the environment variable GOOGLE_API_KEY

Configuration

Driver

Downloading Youtube video's is not simple these days. To cover this, you can choose how you want to download the video's by setting the driver in the configuration.

Available drivers:

• local

The default driver. Requires ffmpeg and yt-dlp or youtube-dl to be installed on the server and it'll download files to the server. Metadata comes from yt-dlp.

• cobalt

Requires a self hosted Cobalt (API) instance. It doesn't require any software to be installed on the server and it doesn't download files to the server. If GOOGLE_API_KEY is set, it'll use the Youtube Data API to get metadata, otherwise it'll download the video to get the metadata and thus use storage space instead.

API authorization

If needed, you can protect the API routes with an authentication guard by setting auth in the configuration.

Example:

'auth' => 'sanctum',

API rate limiting

If needed, you can limit API calls by editing the config setting ratelimiter. See Laravel docs for more information or examples.

Example:

'ratelimiter' => function (Request $request) {
    return Limit::perMinute(5);
},