YouTube iframe API how do I control an iframe player that s already in the HTML

Question

I want to be able to control iframe based YouTube players  This players will be already in the HTML  but I want to control them via the JavaScript API   I ve been reading the documentation for the iframe API which explain how to add a new video to the page with the API  and then control it with the YouTube player functions   var player  function onYouTubePlayerAPIReady         player   new YT Player  container             height   390           width   640           videoId   u1zgFlCw8Aw           events                 onReady   onPlayerReady               onStateChange   onPlayerStateChange                       That code creates a new player object and assigns it to  player   then inserts it inside the  container div  Then I can operate on  player  and call playVideo    pauseVideo    etc  on it   But I want to be able to operate on iframe players which are already on the page   I could do this very easily with the old embed method  with something like   player   getElementById  whateverID    player playVideo      But this doesn t work with the new iframes  How can I assign a iframe object already on the page and then use the API functions on it

User · Answer

My own version of Kim T s code above which combines with some jQuery and allows for targeting of specific iframes     function         callPlayer     iframe   0    unMute         function callPlayer iframe  func  args        if   iframe src indexOf  youtube com embed       -1            iframe contentWindow postMessage  JSON stringify                event    command                func   func               args   args

User · Answer

Fiddle Links  Source code - Preview - Small version Update  This small function will only execute code in a single direction  If you want full support  eg event listeners   getters   have a look at Listening for Youtube Event in jQuery  As a result of a deep code analysis  I ve created a function  function callPlayer requests a function call on any framed YouTube video  See the YouTube Api reference to get a full list of possible function calls  Read the comments at the source code for an explanation   On 17 may 2012  the code size was doubled in order to take care of the player s ready state  If you need a compact function which does not deal with the player s ready state  see http   jsfiddle net 8R5y6            author       Rob W  lt gwnRob gmail com gt      website      https   stackoverflow com a 7513356 938089     version      20190409     description  Executes function on a framed YouTube video  see website link                   For a full list of possible functions  see                   https   developers google com youtube js api reference     param String frame id The id of  the div containing  the frame     param String func     Desired function to call  eg   playVideo             Function       Function to call when the player is ready      param Array  args      optional  List of arguments to pass to function func   function callPlayer frame id  func  args        if  window jQuery  amp  amp  frame id instanceof jQuery  frame id   frame id get 0  id      var iframe   document getElementById frame id       if  iframe  amp  amp  iframe tagName toUpperCase       IFRAME             iframe   iframe getElementsByTagName  iframe   0                 When the player is not ready yet  add the event to a queue        Each frame id is associated with an own queue         Each queue has three possible states          undefined   uninitialised   array   queue    ready true   ready     if   callPlayer queue  callPlayer queue           var queue   callPlayer queue frame id           domReady   document readyState     complete        if  domReady  amp  amp   iframe               DOM is ready and iframe does not exist  Log a message         window console  amp  amp  console log  callPlayer  Frame not found  id     frame id           if  queue  clearInterval queue poller         else if  func      listening                Sending the  listener  message to the frame  to request status updates         if  iframe  amp  amp  iframe contentWindow                func      event   listening   id      JSON stringify    frame id                     iframe contentWindow postMessage func                        else if    queue     queue ready   amp  amp                    domReady                   iframe  amp  amp   iframe contentWindow                   typeof func      function              if   queue  queue   callPlayer queue frame id                queue push  func  args            if     poller  in queue                    keep polling until the document and frame is ready             queue poller   setInterval function                     callPlayer frame id   listening                   250                  Add a global  message  event listener  to catch status updates              messageEvent 1  function runOnceReady e                    if   iframe                        iframe   document getElementById frame id                       if   iframe  return                      if  iframe tagName toUpperCase       IFRAME                             iframe   iframe getElementsByTagName  iframe   0                           if   iframe  return                                                          if  e source     iframe contentWindow                           Assume that the player is ready if we receive a                        message from the iframe                     clearInterval queue poller                       queue ready   true                      messageEvent 0  runOnceReady                             and release the queue                      while  tmp   queue shift                              callPlayer frame id  tmp 0   tmp 1                                                           false                   else if  iframe  amp  amp  iframe contentWindow               When a function is supplied  just call it  like  onYouTubePlayerReady           if  func call  return func               Frame exists  send message         iframe contentWindow postMessage JSON stringify                event    command                func   func               args   args                     id   frame id                                IE8 does not support addEventListener           function messageEvent add  listener            var w3   add   window addEventListener   window removeEventListener          w3               w3  message   listener   1                         add   window attachEvent   window detachEvent   onmessage   listener             Usage   callPlayer  whateverID   function            This function runs once the player is ready   onYouTubePlayerReady       callPlayer  whateverID    playVideo           When the player is not ready yet  the function will be queued     When the iframe cannot be found  a message is logged in the console  callPlayer  whateverID    playVideo      Possible questions   amp  answers    Q  It doesn t work  A   Doesn t work  is not a clear description  Do you get any error messages  Please show the relevant code   Q  playVideo does not play the video  A  Playback requires user interaction  and the presence of allow  autoplay  on the iframe  See https   developers google com web updates 2017 09 autoplay-policy-changes and https   developer mozilla org en-US docs Web Media Autoplay guide  Q  I have embedded a YouTube video using  lt iframe src  http   www youtube com embed As2rZGPGKDY    gt but the function doesn t execute any function  A  You have to add  enablejsapi 1 at the end of your URL   embed vid id enablejsapi 1   Q  I get error message  An invalid or illegal string was specified   Why  A  The API doesn t function properly at a local host  file      Host your  test  page online  or use JSFiddle  Examples  See the links at the top of this answer   Q  How did you know this  A  I have spent some time to manually interpret the API s source  I concluded that I had to use the postMessage method  To know which arguments to pass  I created a Chrome extension which intercepts messages  The source code for the extension can be downloaded here   Q  What browsers are supported  A  Every browser which supports JSON and postMessage      IE 8  Firefox 3 6   actually 3 5  but document readyState was implemented in 3 6  Opera 10 50  Safari 4  Chrome 3    Related answer   implementation  Fade-in a framed video using jQuery Full API support  Listening for Youtube Event in jQuery Official API  https   developers google com youtube iframe api reference    Revision history   17 may 2012 Implemented onYouTubePlayerReady  callPlayer  frame id   function             Functions are automatically queued when the player is not ready yet  24 july 2012 Updated and successully tested in the supported browsers  look ahead   10 october 2013 When a function is passed as an argument  callPlayer forces a check of readiness  This is needed  because when callPlayer is called right after the insertion of the iframe while the document is ready  it can t know for sure that the iframe is fully ready  In Internet Explorer and Firefox  this scenario resulted in a too early invocation of postMessage  which was ignored  12 Dec 2013  recommended to add  amp origin   in the URL  2 Mar 2014  retracted recommendation to remove  amp origin   to the URL  9 april 2019  fix bug that resulted in infinite recursion when YouTube loads before the page was ready  Add note about autoplay

User · Answer

Looks like YouTube has updated their JS API so this is available by default  You can use an existing YouTube iframe s ID      lt iframe id  player  src  http   www youtube com embed M7lc1UVf-VE enablejsapi 1 amp origin http   example com  frameborder  0  gt  lt  iframe gt       in your JS     var player  function onYouTubeIframeAPIReady       player   new YT Player  player         events           onStateChange   onPlayerStateChange                function onPlayerStateChange                    and the constructor will use your existing iframe instead of replacing it with a new one  This also means you don t have to specify the videoId to the constructor   See Loading a video player

User · Answer

Thank you Rob W for your answer   I have been using this within a Cordova application to avoid having to load the API and so that I can easily control iframes which are loaded dynamically   I always wanted the ability to be able to extract information from the iframe  such as the state  getPlayerState  and the time  getCurrentTime    Rob W helped highlight how the API works using postMessage  but of course this only sends information in one direction  from our web page into the iframe  Accessing the getters requires us to listen for messages posted back to us from the iframe   It took me some time to figure out how to tweak Rob W s answer to activate and listen to the messages returned by the iframe  I basically searched through the source code within the YouTube iframe until I found the code responsible for sending and receiving messages   The key was changing the  event  to  listening   this basically gave access to all the methods which were designed to return values   Below is my solution  please note that I have switched to  listening  only when getters are requested  you can tweak the condition to include extra methods   Note further that you can view all messages sent from the iframe by adding a console log e  to the window onmessage  You will notice that once listening is activated you will receive constant updates which include the current time of the video  Calling getters such as getPlayerState will activate these constant updates but will only send a message involving the video state when the state has changed   function callPlayer iframe  func  args        iframe document getElementById iframe       var event    command       if func indexOf  get   gt -1           event    listening              if   iframe amp  amp iframe src indexOf  youtube com embed       -1          iframe contentWindow postMessage  JSON stringify              event   event             func   func             args   args                               window onmessage   function e       var data   JSON parse e data       data   data info      if data currentTime           console log  The current time is   data currentTime             if data playerState           console log  The player state is   data playerState

User · Answer

You can do this with far less code   function callPlayer func  args        var i   0          iframes   document getElementsByTagName  iframe            src           for  i   0  i  lt  iframes length  i    1            src   iframes i  getAttribute  src            if  src  amp  amp  src indexOf  youtube com embed       -1                iframes i  contentWindow postMessage JSON stringify                    event    command                    func   func                   args   args                                                 Working example  http   jsfiddle net kmturley g6P5H 296

[javascript] YouTube iframe API: how do I control an iframe player that's already in the HTML?

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