Android development: Play Youtube video in your app, “Can’t play this video” and troubleshooting

Playing Youtube video in your app is a frequently requested feature, and some time ago, it is trivial to do this using VideoView:

In the layout file, add below:

<VideoView      android:id=“@+id/videoView1“      android:layout_width=“match_parent“      android:layout_height=“wrap_content“ />

And in the Activity’s onCreate() function, add below code:

final VideoView mVideoView = (VideoView) findViewById(R.id.videoView1); MediaController mediaController = new MediaController(this); mediaController.setAnchorView(mVideoView); mVideoView.setMediaController(mediaController); mVideoView.setVideoPath(“https://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSMOykMIO3c“); mVideoView.requestFocus(); mVideoView.setOnPreparedListener(new OnPreparedListener() {     public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer mp) {     mVideoView.start(); }});

Well this is the implementation that works some time ago, but it might no longer works as expected, and you are likely to get a “Can’t play this video.” error, as shown above:

To solve this, a recommended approach is to use YouTube Android Player API, which seems to be very involved to use, but actually it is not!

To illustrate this, I will not go through the process sequentially, but rather dive in directly to show how to use it first, and how easy it is, assuming you have got everything installed (which scared most users and make it feel like very heavy and unwieldy):

Create new project with an empty Activity

1. In the layout XML, add below code:

<com.google.android.youtube.player.YouTubePlayerView             android:id=“@+id/videoView1“             android:layout_width=“match_parent“             android:layout_height=“wrap_content“ />

2. In the YourActivity.Java class, change the base class from Acitivity to YouTubeBaseActivity:

public class MainActivity extends YouTubeBaseActivity implements YouTubePlayer.OnInitializedListener

3. In the onCreate() function in your activity, add below code:

@Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {     super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);     setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);     YouTubePlayerView youTubeView = (YouTubePlayerView)                      findViewById(R.id.videoView1);     youTubeView.initialize(DeveloperKey.DEVELOPER_KEY, this); }

Here you need a developer key, which is saved in the static class DeveloperKey:

public class DeveloperKey {        /**        * Please replace this with a valid API key which is enabled for the        * YouTube Data API v3 service. Go to the        * <a href=”https://code.google.com/apis/console/“>Google APIs Console</a> to        * register a new developer key.        */        public static final String DEVELOPER_KEY = “abcdedefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz”; }

4. Implement the interface YouTubePlayer.OnInitializedListener:

@Override public void onInitializationSuccess(YouTubePlayer.Provider provider,              YouTubePlayer player, boolean wasRestored) {          if (!wasRestored) player.cueVideo(“XSMOykMIO3c”); // your video to play } @Override public void onInitializationFailure(Provider arg0,             YouTubeInitializationResult arg1){ }

5. In AndroidManfest.xml, add below code:
       

<uses-permission android:name=”android.permission.INTERNET” />

Compile and run it on your android device, yeah! That is it!

That said, once you get the developer API key, playing the video seems no harder than the VideoView! I will not cover how to get an API key here, which has been covered here in detail.

This is the simplest use of many features Google Youtube API, you might be interested in getting more from the examples. For instance, you may make your activity implement YouTubeFailureRecoveryActivity, which deals with recovering from errors that may occur during API initialization, but can be corrected through user action.

Yes, no fear, it is quite straightforward, abandon your VideoView, say goodbye to “Can’t play this video”! Happy coding.