WordPress: Embed Youtube Feed With a Simple Shortcode

August 13th, 2010

UPDATE: Looking for more functionality and an easier installation method?

Check out my WordPress plugin: Youtube Feeder

It's based on this code and has a LOT more features

WordPress shortcodes are great. They let you perform complex operations or display dynamic content with just a tiny bit of text in any page or post.

I recently needed a way to embed the most recent videos from a Youtube channel (very dynamic information) in a WordPress page, so I decided to write a shortcode for it.

The code is actually pretty simple. Just add the following to your theme's functions.php file:

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function youtube_feed_shortcode($atts)
{
// Defaults:
extract(shortcode_atts(array(
'user' => 'flamadiddle86', // youtube user
'limit' => 5, // maximum number of videos
'height' => 385, // video height
'width' => 480 // video width
), $atts));
$data = @json_decode(file_get_contents('http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/'.$user.'/uploads?alt=json'), TRUE);
$counter = 0;
$content = '<div class="youtubefeed">';
foreach($data['feed']['entry'] as $vid)
{
$url = $vid['media$group']['media$content'][0]['url'];
$title = $vid['title']['$t'];
$ycontent = $vid['content']['$t'];
$content.= '<object width="'.$width.'" height="'.$height.'">'.
'<param name="movie" value="'.$url.'"></param>'.
'<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>'.
'<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>'.
'<embed src="'.$url.'" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="'.$width.'" height="'.$height.'"></embed></object>'.
'<div class="youtubetitle">'.$title.'</div>'.
'<div class="youtubecontent">'.$ycontent.'</div>'."\n";
$counter++;
if($counter == $limit)
{
break;
}
}
$content .= '</div>';
return $content;
}

add_shortcode('youtubefeed', 'youtube_feed_shortcode');

And it couldn't be easier to use. The videos you see below were embedded simply by putting this code in the post:

1	[youtubefeed]

AndrewEnsley.com

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