TypeError: Cannot read property 'users' of undefined error - api

Question

I have written the code:
function getId(username) {
var infoUrl = "https://www.instagram.com/web/search/topsearch/?context=user&count=0&query=" + username
return parseInt(fetch(infoUrl)['users']);
}
function fetch(url) {
var ignoreError = {
"muteHttpExceptions": true
};
var source = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url, ignoreError).getContentText();
var data = console.log(source);
return data;
}
To get the userID of the username input.
The error corresponds to the line:
return parseInt(fetch(infoUrl)['users']);
I have tried differnt things but I cant get it to work. The url leads to a page looking like this:
{"users": [{"position": 0, "user": {"pk": "44173477683", "username": "mykindofrock", "full_n........
Where the numbers 44173477683 after the "pk": are what I am trying to get as an output.
I hope someone can help as I am very out of my depth, but I guess this is how we learn! :)

Answer 1

I was surprised that the endpoint you provided actually led to a JSON file. I would have thought that to access the Instagram API, you would need register a developer account with Facebook etc. Nevertheless, it does return a JSON by visiting in the browser. I suppose that it just shows the publicly available information on each user.
However, with Apps Script it seems like a different story. I visited:
https://www.instagram.com/web/search/topsearch/?context=user&count=0&query=user
In a browser and chose a random user id. Then I called it from Apps Script with UrlFetchApp:
function test(){
var username = "username7890543216"
var infoUrl = "https://www.instagram.com/web/search/topsearch/?context=user&count=0&query=" + username
var options = {
'muteHttpExceptions': true
}
var result = UrlFetchApp.fetch(infoUrl, options)
console.log(result.getResponseCode())
}
Which returns a 429 response. Which is a "Too Many Requests" response. So if I had to guess, I would say that all requests to this unauthenticated endpoint from Apps Script have been blocked. This is why when replacing the console.log(result.getResponseCode()) with console.log(result.getContentText()), you get a load of HTML (not JSON) part of it which says:
<title>
Page Not Found • Instagram
</title>
Though maybe its IP based. Try and run this code from your end, unless you get a response code of 200, it is likely that you simply can't access this information from Apps Script.

Answer 2

You are setting data to the return value of console.log(source) which is undefined. So no matter what the data is, you will get undefined.
Another thing to avoid is that fetch will not necessarily be hoisted because fetch is a built in function to make API calls.