How webpages like Statigram doesn't exceed Instagram API rate limits - api

Well, pretty much what it says on the tin.
I'm really curious about how pages like Statigram do their search functionality without users authentication and not exceeding the limits?
If I'm correct, Instagram API allows 5000 calls per hour, so I believe it's very likely that they indeed have more traffic than 5000 requests per hour.
Maybe It's a dumb question and Statigram has a special deal with Instagram to use their API or maybe they don't use the API and they use some other method?

The only special request you have to send to Instagram is the request to post comments.
The API limit is 5000 requests per hour per access_token or client_id. Every user has their own access_token, so as long as the requests from the third party application uses each individual access token, they will be hard pressed to exceed 5000 per user per hour.
That works out to 83 requests per minute and any user interacting with your application is highly unlikely to hit that.
From the docs:
You are limited to 5000 requests per hour per access_token or client_id overall. Practically, this means you should (when possible) authenticate users so that limits are well outside the reach of a given user.
If you are not using user authentication, you will likely hit the limit with just your client_id.

Most likely they're using one of the following methods:
An arrangement with Instagram
Credential rotation
IP rotation
Heavy caching (especially across credentials or IPs)
Screenscraping
In cases like this, if you don't have a special arrangement, you're almost certainly violating the terms of service. If you think your service is useful enough that Instagram would be willing to whitelist you to make more requests, get in touch with them.

They must have some sort of arrangement with Instagram as #RunscopeAPITools mentions. You are able to post comments to Instagram from Statigram, which requires special permission.

Related

Github API rate limit specifics

I am trying to find some specific details on the Github API rate limit.
I have seen many different places suggesting 5000 requests per hour, but I have been limited to 30 according to my response headers.
I have looked at a couple other questions related to github rate limits but haven't found any specifics on them.
I authenticate my requests with OAUTH in the headers.
I recieve Error: Request failed with status code 403 which according to the docs means I'm authenticated.
What I would like to know is:
What are the different rate limits?
Why would I receive 30/hour while someone else may have 5000/hour?
How do I increase it?
You are likely seeing a reduced rate limit because you are not successfully authenticating. You may be providing credentials, but those credentials are not correct, don't have the right scopes, or are otherwise not valid for the resources you're requesting. If you're accessing public information, then you'd get access to that data anyway even without authenticating, so your invalid credentials wouldn't matter but would result in a reduced rate limit.
The reason GitHub provides different rate limits for authenticated and unauthenticated users is to prevent abuse and make it possible to contact users who are engaging in excessive or unacceptable behaviors. For example, if a bot account or OAuth app is causing problems, the maintainer of that service can be contacted, and in an emergency, that account can be prevented from accessing the API until it can be fixed so as not to impact other users.
You can, as the documentation mentions, get an increased rate limit for the API by successfully authenticating. You haven't provided any details about what you're requesting or what scopes you've asked for, so we can't help there; you'll probably want to ask another question with more details. Beyond the limit of 5000 requests, you'd have to ask GitHub Support, although that is a relatively generous limit.

Yammer API - rest api rate limits

Apologies if this question has already been asked.
I have followed this guide to create a script that will bulk delete members from a specified Yammer group and I have this working perfectly.
The process used at the minute is obtaining a token for a user, then using that token to remove the user from the group, which takes two API calls.
My question is about "sleeping" to avoid tripping the rate limiter. On the documentation for the Yammer API rate limits (link) it states that "rate limits are per user per app".
In another stackoverflow question (link) it's mentioned that in this context, the user refers to the user token.
Since in my script, I'm only using a single API call per user token (to remove the user from the group), is it necessary implement a sleep to avoid tripping the limit?
I'm also wondering whether the API call to retrieve the token for a user may possibly trip the limiter since it's called using the admin token?
I've run a few tests removing 52 users from a group using a script without any "sleeps" and it completed successfully in around 27 seconds, just trying to understand why this didn't break the limiter.
Thanks in advance!
is it necessary implement a sleep to avoid tripping the limit?
Yes, the admin user (or token if you like) could trip the limit in this case. To be on the safe side, that is, to avoid your app from being (manually or automatically) blocked, you shouldn't make more than request per second to Yammer endpoints that are categorised under "Other Resources". That's the Official guideline.

Is there a limit on instagram's api for oauth tokens

Sorry this question might seem a little dumb, but does instagram limit access to the access tokens they give you. I know on twitter you're limited to 100,000 access tokens, so does instagram do the same on their api? Lets say I have 150,000 users, will instagram's api allow those users to be authorized?
The official documentation does not say about any limits about access tokens. However they have limits per hour.
Global rate limits are applied inclusive of all API calls made by an app over the 1-hour sliding window, regardless of the particular endpoint. The limits are applied independently from each other; authenticated calls are not counted against the rate limit for unauthenticated calls and vice-versa.
So the answer is No, as of now.

Instagram API Error: Client request limit reached

I am getting this error whenever I try to follow someone on Instagram via API no matter how many follows have been done before:
{"meta":{"error_type":"APIError","code":400,"error_message":"Client request limit reached"}}
My app allows authenticated users to follow interesting people. I know that there is a 5000 call/hour limit per authenticated user, but it fails even with new users.
Do my app is reaching some kind of client level limit?
APIs like follow, unfollow, comment are limited to 350 requests per hour. However sending requests from client side will fix this problem to some extent but it allows the users to see your API token.
In this case it looks like it would be beneficial to get some more data from your users. You could use Google analytics to track the "follow" action
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/eventTrackerGuide
This would give you a timestamp and information about user behavior.
Even with an advertised rate of X requests per hour, one user hammering the service with your API key can cause everyone to get throttled. (Not guaranteed, but pretty common practice for companies to keep their services alive)
It might be a good idea to reset your API, its possible (though unlikely) that someone has acquired your key and is using it.

Is the Twitter Search API affected by the recent Twitter API changes?

I've been building an app which allows the user to search through recent (i.e. 6-9 days worth) public tweets on Twitter using the Twitter Search API.
Currently, the site is entirely public - that is, users do not need to sign in to Twitter (or even be Twitter users at all) to use my app.
However, the upcoming changes to the Twitter API have left me confused, particularly the fact it would appear that every request to Twitter's API will need to be authenticated.
My limited understanding of how Twitter's API works is that I need to authenticate my app using OAUTH, which in turn means that, if I want to continue accessing the Twitter Search API, users will need to sign in to my site before they can use the functionality related to the Search API - hence, only Twitter users will be able to use that section of my app.
Am I understanding this correctly, or is the Twitter Search API exempt from the changes? If I authenticate my app, does this mean the rate at which users can search Twitter status updates through my app is increased (or any other advantages over having non-authenticated apps)? Note that I am currently implementing a caching feature to cache related searches.
Thanks!
The changes to the Twitter API would affect your application depending on how your application works. These are the changes that you should be aware of:
All requests used to be anonymous. Now, all requests must be authenticated via OAuth.
With the old rate limits, according to my tests, you where able to make about one request per second per IP address. Now you can make 180 requests per 15 minute block per authenticated user (1 request every 5 seconds on average).
Not related, but still worth mentioning, the data that the new API returns is more similar to the data that the Streaming API returns. It's much more complete.
So, according to these changes, if your application uses some kind of a bot which polls the Search API, stores the results into a database, and then your users search within these stored results; you will have to implement OAuth with your own access token, which you can get by creating an application at dev.twitter.com.
But, if your application connects to the Search API every time that your users interact with it, and you think that you will have to make more than one request every 5 seconds on average, then you will have to ask your users to authenticate in order to get their access tokens for your requests.