GData for YouTube

After 3 months of anticipation, YouTube has released an updated (and hopefully much less buggy) version of their API. It’s based on GData, which is Google’s standard for content publishing.

It kept all the features from the old API, and added the following neat features:

• Sort videos by data uploaded, views, rating, or relevance!
• Only retrieve videos of a particular format (the plain YouTube flash, RTSP streaming URL for mobile video playback, or the URL to the SWF player for non-embeddable videos). Apparently the majority of videos are available in the first and last of those formats.
• Filter out “racy” content
• Added time parameters (today, this week, or this month) to “Top Rated.” Previously this was just available with “Most Viewed”

Not bad, but everyone has been screaming for an upload API, which YouTube has acknowledged is still missing. I guess they’re busy like the rest of us…

What does that mean for TubePress? Well, because it’s the way YouTube is headed, and because it has all the cool new features, TubePress is going to use the new API from now on. I’ll release it with Version 1.5.5 of the plugin, which is already well underway. This release will probably come in the next few weeks. I’d work on it this weekend, but instead am headed up to Glacier National Park armed with bear mace (I’d probably use mine on a bear instead).

• The API’s new home at Google
• The gritty details of the new API