Media playback

In the previous recipe, we retrieved search results from YouTube and displayed them in a list and detail fragment. The entries found represent videos, so it would be nice if we were able to play them as well in our app. Let's find a way to do this.

Since we do know the video ID, it is not that difficult to compose a URL for it and load them in a web view; however, Google provides an easier solution for this and offers the YouTube Android Player API for this purpose. It has a couple of limitations but is interesting enough to explore.

Getting ready

To go through this recipe, you need to complete the previous recipe as this one picks up where we left off. While I recommend you to test the app on a physical phone and tablet, you can, of course, use Genymotion as well.

If you are using virtual devices, then Google apps (and the YouTube app on which the API and the player depend) will be missing, and the app will fail for that reason. You need to download and install them on...