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Upload videos

Uploading a video on your Dailymotion account can be done programmatically using our API.

In this article, we’ll go through the complete upload workflow via the API, with detailed steps and code samples to help you getting started.

👍

Note for Organizations:

All API calls and code samples in this guide can be used to upload content on child channels.


Overview

Uploading content on Dailymotion can be done through the following steps:

  1. Authenticate the user: Get an access token with the right scope to be able to upload on the channel.
  2. Get an upload URL: Provide your access token to get a dedicated upload URL where you’ll be able to upload your content.
  3. Upload the video: Send your file to your upload URL.
  4. Create the video: Create the video ID in your channel.
  5. Publish the video: Set up the mandatory fields and publish your content.

📘

Upload content hosted on an external URL:

If your video already has an external url, you don’t need to upload it to our servers: you can directly use this url as the video source.

Therefore, we invite you to directly go to the step "Create the video" and use your external URL as url value.


1. Authenticate the user

As uploading content is an action that impacts one’s account, you need to be authenticated with a user having access to the destination channel.

You will have to request an access token with the correct scope/permissions to be able to upload content on the channel.

See which scope you need based on whether you’re using a public or a private API key:

Request an access token with the scope `manage_videos`.
Learn more about scopes: https://developers.dailymotion.com/reference/api-scopes#/
When creating/editing your private API key from your Dailymotion Studio, toggle on all permissions in 'Manage videos'

See the authentication guide for more information on how to authenticate the user and request an access token.

⚠️

An access token is required for this guide:

Your access token will be required for all the steps listed below.

We invite you to keep it accessible during the entire process or add it as a variable on your project.

2. Get an upload URL

Now that you have an access token with the right scope/permissions, you need to request an upload URL to Dailymotion in order to host your file.

Perform a GET request to the relevant endpoint and include your access token to retrieve an upload URL.:

curl  https://api.dailymotion.com/file/upload
     -H "Authorization: Bearer ${ACCESS_TOKEN}"
curl  https://partner.api.dailymotion.com/rest/file/upload
     -H "Authorization: Bearer ${ACCESS_TOKEN}"

Get an upload URL: Try it out!


Response example

The server will return 2 values :

  • The upload_url: the URL you will use in the next step to send your file on our servers.
  • The progress_url: the URL you can use to track the upload status from your upload location to our servers.
{
    "upload_url": "https://upload-XXX.dailymotion.com/upload?uuid=UUID&seal=SEAL&extra=CHANNEL_ID",
    "progress_url": "https://upload-XXX.dailymotion.com/progress?uuid=UUID"
}

📘

Resume function:

The upload process includes a resume function. Interrupted uploads automatically resume once the connection is back.


3. Upload the video

You have generated your upload_url, you can now host your file by sending it to this dedicated server slot:

Perform a POST HTTP request to the receivedupload_url using multipart/form-data content type and include the file field, filled with the content path to upload.

curl -X POST \
     -F 'file=@/path/to/your/video.mp4' \
     '<UPLOAD_URL>'

Response

Once the POST HTTP request is complete, the upload server will return in response several content metadata, including the url field.

{
    "acodec": "AAC",
    "bitrate": "1281806",
    "dimension": "400x848",
    "duration": "20852",
    "format": "MPEG-4",
    "hash": "XXX",
    "name": "My new upload",
    "seal": "XXX",
    "size": "3341029",
    "streamable": "Yes",
    "url": "https://upload-XXX.dailymotion.com/files/FILE_ID",
    "vcodec": "AVC"
}
⚠️

Upload activity and failure

About upload expiration:

  • The upload url does not have an expiry term for uploading, although some activity has to be “seen” on started uploads at least every 4 hours.
  • If the upload POST fails, you need to reacquire a new upload_url.

About video upload limits:

  • Upload is not unlimited on our platform and depends on your account type and settings. Learn more about upload limits.

4. Create and publish the video

Once your video file is hosted (either on your own servers or a third-party service), you can use the url field to create the Dailymotion video object and directly publish it in the same request.

To do this, perform a POST request to the upload endpoint and include the following mandatory fields:

  • url - URL of the hosted video file
  • published – The video is published and can be embedded. Note that this does not determine whether the video is public or private. To do so, use private parameter.
  • title – The title of the video on the platform.
  • is_created_for_kids – Indicates whether the content is intended for children.
  • channel – The content category associated with your content (See our Channel object API Reference)

Additionally, we recommend including the private parameter to define if your video should be public or private.

You can also specify additional metadata such as description or tags. To get the full list of available fields, refer to our Video fields:

curl -X POST \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer ${ACCESS_TOKEN}" \
     -d 'url=<VIDEO_URL>' \
     -d 'title=Dailymotion upload test' \
     -d 'channel=videogames' \
     -d 'published=true' \
     -d 'private=false' \
     -d 'is_created_for_kids=false' \
     "https://api.dailymotion.com/user/<CHANNEL_ID>/videos"
curl -X POST \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer ${ACCESS_TOKEN}" \
     -d 'url=<VIDEO_URL>' \
     -d 'title=Dailymotion upload test' \
     -d 'channel=videogames' \
     -d 'published=true' \
     -d 'private=false' \
     -d 'is_created_for_kids=false' \
     "https://partner.api.dailymotion.com/rest/user/<CHANNEL_ID>/videos"

Create a video: Try it out!


Response example

This API call will create the video on your channel. The ID of the newly created video will be returned in the id field of the response.

{
    "id": "NEW_VIDEO_ID",
    "title": "Sans Titre",
    "channel": null,
    "owner": "OWNER_ID"
}
⚠️

About is_created_for_kids:

is_created_for_kids is a mandatory field which must be filled to identify the audience targeted by your content in order to comply with several laws such as COPPA and GDPR.

You can visit our Help Center for more information if you need additional insights on how to determine the audience of your video, and check how to use the “is_created_for_kids” mandatory field.

Code samples


$url = $api->uploadFile('/path/to/your/video.mp4');
$api->post(
    '/user/<CHANNEL_ID>/videos',
    array(
        'url'       => $url,
        'title'     => 'My Title',
        'channel'   => 'videogames',
        'published' => true,
        'private' => false,
        'is_created_for_kids' => false,
    )
);
// get an upload url
DM.api('/file/upload', function (response)
{
    //upload the video and get the url
    var xhr =  new XMLHttpRequest();
    xhr.open('POST', response.upload_url, true);
    var formData = new FormData(document.getElementById("fileDomId"));
    xhr.send(formData);

    // check when video is uploaded
    xhr.onreadystatechange = function ()
    {
        if (xhr.readyState == 4)
        {
            // create the video object and publish the video
            DM.api(
                '/user/<CHANNEL_ID>/videos',
                'post',
                {
                    url: JSON.parse(xhr.response).url,
                    title: 'My Title',
                    channel: 'videogames',
                    published: 'true',
                    private: 'false',
                    is_created_for_kids: 'false'
                }
            );
        }
    }
});
d = dailymotion.Dailymotion()
d.set_grant_type('password', api_key=API_KEY, api_secret=API_SECRET,
    scope=['manage_videos'], info={'username': USERNAME, 'password': PASSWORD})
url = d.upload('./video.mp4')
d.post(
    "/user/<CHANNEL_ID>/videos",
    {
        "url": url,
        "title": "My Title",
        "published": "true",
        "private": "false",
        "channel": "news",
        "is_created_for_kids": "false",
    },
)

Updated 2 days ago