Red Hot Chilli Project

arc_youtube :: Jun 7, 05:50 PM

Easily embed Youtube videos and playlists in articles and customise the appearance of the player.

I am aware that there are other Youtube plug-ins for Textpattern out there, but I believe mine is a little different.

With arc_youtube you can customise the appearance of the player, setting its size, colour scheme, and apply a border. Videos can be associated with articles using a custom field and are identified using either the video’s ID or URL.

Installation

To install go to the ‘plugins’ tab under ‘admin’ and paste the plugin code into the ‘Install plugin’ box, ‘upload’ and then ‘install’. Finally activate the plugin. Please note that you will need to set-up a custom field to use for associating videos with articles, unless you choose to directly embed the new tag in the article text.

Syntax

<txp:arc_youtube />

<txp:arc_youtube video=“ta7VHKGuoJY” />

or,

<txp:arc_youtube video=“http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ta7VHKGuoJY” />

Usage

Video and playlists

Attribute	Description	Default	Example
video	Youtube url1 or video ID for the video you want to embed	unset	video=“ta7VHKGuoJY”
playlist	Youtube playlist ID for the playlist you want to embed	unset	playlist=“2DBFB60D581AB901”
custom	Name of the custom field containing video IDs/urls associated with article	Youtube ID	custom=“video”

¹ The url can be either for an individual video or for a playlist.

Basics

Attribute	Description	Default	Example
link	Set to ‘1’ to show a link to the Youtube video page below the player; the link text will be the URL or the text between opening and closing tags	0	link=“1”
label	Label for the video	no label	label=“Youtube video”
labeltag	Independent wraptag for label	empty	labeltag=“h3”
wraptag	HTML tag to be used as the wraptag, without brackets	unset	wraptag=“div”
class	CSS class attribute for wraptag	arc_youtube	class=“youtube”

Customising the Youtube player

You can customise the appearance of the Youtube flash player using this plugin to define colours, size, and language settings.

Attribute	Description	Default	Example
width	Width of video	425	width=“200”
height	Height of video	344	height=“150”
color1	Six-digit hexadecimal colour code (if color1 and color2 are unset then the default Youtube colour scheme is used)	unset	color1=“2b405b”
color2	Six-digit hexadecimal colour code	unset	color2=“6b8ab6”
border	‘1’ to show border, ‘0’ to hide border	0	border=“1”
fs	‘1’ to allow full screen, ‘0’ to disable full screen mode	1
auto	‘1’ to autoplay the video, ‘0’ to turn off autoplay (default)	0
lang	Language code for player, by default this is set to English “en”	en	lang=“fr”

Examples

Example 1: Use custom field to associate video with an article

<txp:arc_youtube custom=“Youtube” />

Example 2: Customise the appearance of the player and associate video with custom field

<txp:arc_youtube color1=“006699” color2=“54abd6” border=“1” custom=“Youtube” />

This will place a border around the player and change its colour scheme to a blue one. As example 1, the video is selected using an article’s custom field called ‘Youtube’.

Example 3: Small video player with fixed video

<txp:arc_youtube width=“200” height=“150” video=“ta7VHKGuoJY” />

Here the video is defined within the tag using the video attribute which has been given the value of Youtube’s video ID, alternatively this value could have been the video’s URL.

Example 4: Youtube page link below player

<txp:arc_youtube link=“1”>Link to Youtube page</txp:arc_youtube>

Example 5: Embed a playlist

<txp:arc_youtube video=“http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2DBFB60D581AB901” />

This embeds a Youtube playlist (a single player that cycles through the videos in the playlist). Alternatively the playlist ID can be used using the ‘playlist’ attribute:-

<txp:arc_youtube playlist=“2DBFB60D581AB901” />

Change-log

• v0.2 (7/6/9)
  • now works with playlists
  • new ‘auto’ attribute to enable video autoplay
  • updated help documentation

In development

In order of importance:-

1. Ensure valid XHTML output, currently the plugin fails on this. Fixed as of version 0.1.2.
2. Ability to embed multiple videos.

Plugin details

Initial release: 12 November 2008
Current version: 0.2 [ download ]