I've created an application in sandbox on Instagram and I just noticed that despite having the users be a part of my sandbox environment and also following them (and being followed) on Instagram, I am UNABLE to retrieve the media of ONLY those users who've set their account as Private Account. I am able to retrieve media of all the users who've not set any privacy on their account regardless of whether they follow me/I follow them or not.
Now, despite me following and being followed by some users, and also including them as sandbox users of my app, why am I unable to retrieve their data?
API Used: https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/{user-id}/media/recent/?access_token=ACCESS-TOKEN
Link: https://www.instagram.com/developer/endpoints/users/
Instagram API no longer allows retrieving private profiles even if the user has been approved by the private user. This change went into effect with the June 1st 2016 API changes.
private profile can be retrieved using API using the private profile's access_token, but not any other user's access_token (even if approved)
Related
I'm developing of a community website that features about 500 user profiles. We now want to add the option to show the users' Instagram feed on their profile (with their consent). Going through the instagram API documentation some questions arose concerning the right approach about permissions and the review process.
Can anyone clarify if the following is a working approach and a valid use case regarding instagram's policy: Creating one client ID / access token for the website that is used to communicate serverside with the Instagram API, using the public_content permission to query the members' timeline. Server side caching would ensure that the rate limits are respected.
Since we need read-only access to public content only we would like to avoid managing authorization of every single member.
Thanks!
In the recent API changes Instagram removed the ability to use the client_id for requests and now an access_toek obtained by authorising and Instagram account is required for everything
You could make an account for your website, authorize it and use its access_token, but it will need to apply for the public_content permission and I don't thin Instagram will like this use case. Also with 500 accounts you may hit your Ali request limit.
The better option is to require uses to authorise their Instagram account if they want their recent posts on their profile and use their token to get their recent posts. This way you don't need the public_content permission
I am trying to fetch data using the Instagram API endpoints. Steps that I have followed
1. Register the client app.
2. Got the access token.
3. I am using this access token through out the url endpoints.
Ex. to get the data for recent media I am using this url endpoint: https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/self/media/recent/?access_token=ACCESS-TOKEN
However as I am in Sandbox mode, as per the documentation I get only the recent 20 media. Whereas my account contains in total 291 media.
Problems that I am facing:
Not able to get next_url in the paginationpart.
Usage of min_id and max_id in the url does not respond to any changes in the output or the data i.e fetched (Still get only 20 records/media)
Ex: https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/self/media/recent?access_token=XXXXXX&min_id=xxxxxx_xxxxx&max_id=xxxxxxx_xxxxxxx
Can anybody provide a solution as to how exactly I should get all of my historical data ?
You're in the sandbox mode so there's no way to achieve what you're trying to do before your app has been reviewed and approved (and gone live). From Instagram API documentation:
After your app has been reviewed and approved, you are ready to make it available to the general public. To switch your client from sandbox to live mode, you can use the button on the top section of the configuration screen for your app. When you are live, any Instagram user will be able to authorize your app, but you will have access only to the permissions that you were granted during the review.
Well, maybe you should try this library that allows you to scrape public info withou auth (client_id or access_token): https://github.com/raiym/instagram-php-scraper
$medias = Instagram::getMedias('kevin', 150);
The Instagram new API policy have become super strict. They are not allowing fetching public content at all. We are literally following all Instagram policies and still cant get approval of public_content.
Is there any workaround or any possibility of fetching the data.
This is the response that I have recieved from instagram
General issues:
Policy Violation (Ad network, Influencer network, Other related): Your
app should not attempt to build an ad network on Instagram, nor
transfer any data that you receive from us (including anonymous,
aggregate, or derived data) to any ad network, data broker, influencer
network, or other advertising or monetization-related service. In
working to build a high quality platform, we ask that you comply with
our Platform Policy
(http://wwww.instagram.com/about/legal/terms/api/).
Yeah, they now grant permissions only to applications with some specific usage cases.
According to Instagram official website, these are:
To help individuals share their own content with 3rd party apps
To help brands and advertisers understand and manage their audience and digital media rights
To help broadcasters and publishers discover content, get digital rights to media, and share media with proper attribution
Note that in order to get public_content permission, you need to fall under the 2nd or the 3rd use case. Otherwise, consider changing your application / service in such way that is now uses basic permission and acquires only your users' media.
There is no valid and legal possibility to fetch public data except for successful passing the Instagram permission review.
This official developer documentation page may be useful to you.
You need to enable scopes invividually for your client https://api.instagram.com/oauth/authorize?client_id=CLIENT_ID&redirect_uri=APPCALLBACK&access_token=ACCESSTOKEN&response_type=code&scope=public_content in your browser, using your values for the uppercase words? This should enable your registered client to work with the public_content scope.
https://api.instagram.com/oauth/authorize?client_id=xxxxx&redirect_uri=xxxxx&access_token=xxxxx&response_type=code&scope=public_content
your comment
Read the error message, did you supply a valid client-id from your instagram developer account. Did you setup a redirect_uri for that client? Do you authenticate to instagram to get an access token?
This worked for me this weekend. Double check the values you set in the url and call it directly in your browser.
I'm working for a company that displays content on big screens located on public places like GYMs or waiting rooms.
One client asked app that shows Instagram content from celebrities accounts, so I created one using the Instagram API.
The problem is that the app is in sandbox mode and it gets blank data.
It seems I can only show media from sandbox users (not Beyonce), when I submitted for review it was rejected because it doesn't meet the requirements.
Is there a way to make it work?
During tests I used a valid access token I found on internet, but I don't think that is a valid solution.
You are correct, when app is in sandbox mode you are only able to see data on Instagram from sandbox users which you have set in advance. You won't get any public data on Instagram in this mode.
According to the API, your app doesn't have the criteria required to get approved.
From the Permissions Review page:
Valid Use Cases
We will approve submissions of apps that fall into these use cases:
To help individuals share their own content with 3rd party apps
To help brands and advertisers understand and manage their audience and
digital media rights
To help broadcasters and publishers discover content, get digital > rights to media, and share media with proper attribution
They also listed use cases of applications that won't get approval and it seems like your app matches one of them:
Here are some examples of scenarios that will not be approved:
One-off projects. If you are an agency building websites or other integrations, note that we don't grant permissions to clients created
for one-off projects. If you are interested in building a product,
platform, or widget that will be used as a service across multiple
projects, then you may submit a single client_id that you can use
across multiple projects
...
To get approved you should modify your application to correspond with criteria, perhaps build multiple projects?
You can also try to pull down the data from this URL: https://www.instagram.com/<username>/media/
For Beyonce account, use: https://www.instagram.com/beyonce/media/
Lastly, the access token is unique per-app, so you can't be using a random one. Here is a tutorial on how to generate access token for your app.
I'm trying to access public information from API's without actually having users grant access to the API in my mobile Application. Is this actually possible, or are the Oauth permissions for any sort of access to an API?
For example, I want my application to be able to pull a list of nearby restaurants for my application without asking the user if Yelp can access the application. Since the user just wants nearby food information, the request for restaurants isn't user specific, and the user shouldn't actually have to login.
Another example is if I want Eventbrite to simply give me a list of upcoming events. Is there a way to get this list without having a user authenticate Eventbrite within my application itsself?
You can call an API endpoint with your own token (between your Eventbrite account and your application key), and if the data is public (even if it's 'owned' by a different Eventbrite account) we'll return the data.
For example, if you want a list of events across our Event Directory (Event Search endpoint: http://developer.eventbrite.com/docs/event-search/) you can call this method with your own OAuth token (you can grab your OAuth token here: http://eventbrite.com/myaccount/apps).
Hope that helps!