Mintplex-Labs/anything-llm · error

Failed to get youtube video id from the url

Error message

Failed to get youtube video id from the url

What it means

Thrown by the static `YoutubeLoader.getVideoID(url)` after `validYoutubeVideoUrl(url, true)` returns a falsy value — i.e. the input did not match any known YouTube URL shape. This is the URL-parsing counterpart to error 40: it rejects links the regex/validator cannot map to a video id before any transcript fetch is attempted.

Source

Thrown at collector/utils/extensions/YoutubeTranscript/YoutubeLoader/index.js:30

  #language;
  #addVideoInfo;

  constructor({ videoId = null, language = null, addVideoInfo = false } = {}) {
    if (!videoId) throw new Error("Invalid video id!");
    this.#videoId = videoId;
    this.#language = language;
    this.#addVideoInfo = addVideoInfo;
  }

  /**
   * Extracts the videoId from a YouTube video URL.
   * @param url The URL of the YouTube video.
   * @returns The videoId of the YouTube video.
   */
  static getVideoID(url) {
    const videoId = validYoutubeVideoUrl(url, true);
    if (videoId) return videoId;
    throw new Error("Failed to get youtube video id from the url");
  }

  /**
   * Creates a new instance of the YoutubeLoader class from a YouTube video
   * URL.
   * @param url The URL of the YouTube video.
   * @param config Optional configuration options for the YoutubeLoader instance, excluding the videoId.
   * @returns A new instance of the YoutubeLoader class.
   */
  static createFromUrl(url, config = {}) {
    const videoId = YoutubeLoader.getVideoID(url);
    return new YoutubeLoader({ ...config, videoId });
  }

  /**
   * Loads the transcript and video metadata from the specified YouTube
   * video. It uses the youtube-transcript library to fetch the transcript
   * and the youtubei.js library to fetch the video metadata.

View on GitHub (pinned to 526360e320)

Solutions

1. Pre-validate with the same `validYoutubeVideoUrl(url, true)` helper before calling getVideoID, and reject early with a clear UI message.
2. Trim whitespace and normalize the URL (decode, follow redirects) before extraction.
3. If you already hold a bare 11-char id, pass it straight to the constructor instead of going through getVideoID.
4. Expand or update `validYoutubeVideoUrl` to cover the URL shapes your users actually submit (shorts, embed, music subdomain).

Example fix

// before
const id = YoutubeLoader.getVideoID(rawUrl);

// after
const trimmed = String(rawUrl || '').trim();
if (!validYoutubeVideoUrl(trimmed, true)) {
  throw new Error('Please paste a valid YouTube watch, share, or embed URL');
}
const id = YoutubeLoader.getVideoID(trimmed);

const { validYoutubeVideoUrl } = require('../path/to/validators');
function extractIdOrReject(url) {
  const cleaned = String(url || '').trim();
  const id = validYoutubeVideoUrl(cleaned, true);
  if (!id) throw new Error('Please paste a valid YouTube watch, share, or embed URL');
  return id;
}

function isLikelyYoutubeUrl(u) {
  return typeof u === 'string' && /(?:youtube\.com\/watch\?v=|youtu\.be\/|youtube\.com\/embed\/|youtube\.com\/shorts\/)[A-Za-z0-9_-]{11}/.test(u.trim());
}

try {
  const id = YoutubeLoader.getVideoID(url);
} catch (e) {
  if (/Failed to get youtube video id/i.test(e.message)) {
    return { error: 'That doesn\'t look like a YouTube video URL.' };
  }
  throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling `getVideoID('https://youtu.be/abc')` (too-short id), `getVideoID('not a url')`, `getVideoID('https://vimeo.com/...')`, short links that redirect but don't expose the id in the URL, or URLs with the `v=` query param stripped. Also triggered by `createFromUrl` which delegates here.

Common situations: Users paste a channel URL, a Shorts share link in an unexpected format, an embed URL, or a music.youtube.com link the validator doesn't recognize; copy-paste includes trailing whitespace or a stray Unicode character.

Related errors

• Invalid video id!
• Impossible to retrieve Youtube video ID.
• Type "${type}" is not a valid type to sync.
• Invalid link provided
• Failed to sync YouTube video transcript. ${reason}

AI-assisted analysis of Mintplex-Labs/anything-llm@526360e320 (2026-08-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/6b27fe793c833e04. Report an issue: GitHub.