YouTube Shorts contains valuable data -- short video results, video ids, view counts, published time, and more. Scraping this data directly means dealing with anti-bot detection, CAPTCHAs, IP rotation, and constantly breaking selectors. The Scavio API handles all of that and returns clean, structured JSON from a single POST request.
This tutorial shows you how to scrape YouTube Shorts using PHP and the Scavio API. By the end, you will have a working PHP script that fetches real-time YouTube Shorts data and parses the results.
Prerequisites
- PHP installed on your machine
- A Scavio API key (free tier includes 50 credits on signup -- no credit card required)
Step 1: Install Dependencies
cURL is built into PHP, so there is nothing to install.
# The cURL extension ships with PHPStep 2: Make Your First YouTube Shorts Search
Send a POST request to the Scavio YouTube Shorts API endpoint with your query. The API returns structured JSON with short video results, video ids, view counts, and more.
<?php
// Shorts search takes search (not query). channel.name is often empty on Shorts rows -
// resolve it with POST /api/v1/youtube/video when you need it.
$apiKey = "sk_live_your_key";
$search = "ai coding agent shorts";
$ch = curl_init("https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/youtube/shorts");
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_POST => true,
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
"Authorization: Bearer $apiKey",
"Content-Type: application/json",
],
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode(["search" => $search]),
]);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$data = json_decode($response, true);
print_r($data);Step 3: Example Response
The API returns structured JSON. Here is an example response for a YouTube Shorts search:
{
"data": {
"results": [
{
"video_id": "_P63NrBN49U",
"title": "My go to Full Body Workout. No equipment. Anywhere",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_P63NrBN49U",
"duration_text": null,
"view_count": 64000000,
"published_time": "1 year ago",
"channel": { "id": null, "name": "", "url": null }
}
],
"next_cursor": "GhkKF...",
"has_more": true
},
"response_time": 2290,
"credits_used": 2,
"credits_remaining": 4809
}Every field is structured and typed -- no HTML parsing, no CSS selectors, no regex extraction. Your PHP code can access any field directly.
Step 4: Full Working Example
Here is a complete, runnable PHP script that searches YouTube Shorts and prints the results:
<?php
/**
* Search YouTube Shorts data with the Scavio API.
* POST /api/v1/youtube/shorts - rows come back under data.results.
*/
// Shorts search takes search (not query). channel.name is often empty on Shorts rows -
// resolve it with POST /api/v1/youtube/video when you need it.
const API_URL = "https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/youtube/shorts";
function search_youtube_shorts(string $search): array {
$apiKey = getenv("SCAVIO_API_KEY");
$ch = curl_init(API_URL);
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_POST => true,
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
"Authorization: Bearer $apiKey",
"Content-Type: application/json",
],
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode(["search" => $search]),
]);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
$httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
curl_close($ch);
if ($httpCode !== 200) {
throw new Exception("Scavio API error: $httpCode");
}
return json_decode($response, true);
}
$data = search_youtube_shorts("ai coding agent shorts");
echo json_encode($data, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);Why Use Scavio Instead of Scraping YouTube Shorts Directly?
- No proxy management. Direct scraping requires rotating proxies to avoid IP bans. Scavio handles all of this server-side.
- No CAPTCHA solving. YouTube Shorts aggressively blocks automated requests. Scavio returns clean data every time.
- Structured JSON output. No HTML parsing or CSS selector maintenance. Get typed, consistent data from every request.
- Multi-platform in one API. Search Google, Amazon, YouTube, and Walmart from the same API key with the same authentication pattern.
- Free tier included. 50 credits on signup with no credit card required. Each search costs 1 credit.