Extract Video-ID from a Youtube url

get_yt_video_id.py

# initial version: http://stackoverflow.com/a/7936523/617185 \
#    by Mikhail Kashkin(http://stackoverflow.com/users/85739/mikhail-kashkin)

def get_yt_video_id(url):
    """Returns Video_ID extracting from the given url of Youtube
    
    Examples of URLs:
      Valid:
        'http://youtu.be/_lOT2p_FCvA',
        'www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lOT2p_FCvA&feature=feedu',
        'http://www.youtube.com/embed/_lOT2p_FCvA',
        'http://www.youtube.com/v/_lOT2p_FCvA?version=3&hl=en_US',
        'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTHlyTphWP0&index=6&list=PLjeDyYvG6-40qawYNR4juzvSOg-ezZ2a6',
        'youtube.com/watch?v=_lOT2p_FCvA',
      
      Invalid:
        'youtu.be/watch?v=_lOT2p_FCvA',
    """

    from urlparse import urlparse, parse_qs

    if url.startswith(('youtu', 'www')):
        url = 'http://' + url
        
    query = urlparse(url)
    
    if 'youtube' in query.hostname:
        if query.path == '/watch':
            return parse_qs(query.query)['v'][0]
        elif query.path.startswith(('/embed/', '/v/')):
            return query.path.split('/')[2]
    elif 'youtu.be' in query.hostname:
        return query.path[1:]
    else:
        raise ValueError

This is very useful for scraping YouTube links from forum comments. However, various forms of invalid url return None, for example get_yt_video_id('youtube') (a plain text mention of 'youtube') and get_yt_video_id('https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=exampeofaplaylisturl'). Perhaps else statements could be used to raise a ValueError?

Very good, thank you.

Compatible with python 3

try:
    # python 3
    from urllib.parse import urlparse, parse_qs
except ImportError:
    # python 2
    from urlparse import urlparse, parse_qs