How to check if a url contains video? - ruby-on-rails

Question

hi
i am creating a script ruby on rails in which user shares a link and if the link contains a video, the embed code of the video is extracted. in other words, i am trying to implement a "facebook post link" like feature.. can someone please guide me how can this be achieved??

Answer 1

The only way I can think of to do this would be to manually check each post for a link to the video, for example:
YOUTUBE_EMBED = '<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>'
if comment =~ /.*http:\/\/(\w+\.)?youtube.com\/watch\?v=(\w+).*/
return YOUTUBE_EMBED.gsub(/VIDEO_ID/, $2)
end
Then repeat this process for each video site. I am wrestling with a similar concept so if you figure out a better way to do it let me know!

Answer 2

You can analyze http headers for that link
require "net/http"
Net::HTTP.start('www.jhepple.com', 80) do |http|
http.head('/support/SampleMovies/MPEG-1.mpg')
end['content-type']
Outputs "video/mpeg"
Now that you know it's really a video, do what you want with it

Answer 3

You could also use a utility like file and fork a system process so that it executes a command like file -b downloaded_file.mpg.
So your code would look something like this:
IO.popen("file -b /path/to/video.mpg") { |stdout| #stdout = stdout.gets }
if not #stdout.grep(/MPEG/).empty?
puts "MPEG Detected"
end

Answer 4

Flash videos usually have the extension .flv, so you just need to look for files that have it.
html_souce.scan(%r|href\s*=\s*\"[^\"]+\.flv\"|)
If you need other file formats, just change the regexp.

Answer 5

You can use an external service like embedl.ly
Here you're a gem that may help you https://github.com/judofyr/ruby-oembed