Instagram public RSS feed

Question

I was wondering how ink361 was creating an Instagram RSS feed from a username.

Example feed: http://ink361.com/feed/user/snoopdogg

Blog post: http://blog.ink361.com/post/23664609916/new-rss-instagram-feed-feature-on-ink361-com

Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Instagram has a publicly accessible RSS API, it's hard to find any information about it, but it works for tags (we do use it).

For tags the syntax is the following:

http://instagr.am/tags/some-tag-you-want-to-follow/feed/recent.rss

I'm not sure whether they have something similar for users' feeds, as I've said it's really hard to find information about it and it may disappear from a day to another in favor of the official API, but right now it works for tags.

Here's an official blog post about it (although it covers only tags): http://blog.instagram.com/post/8755963247/introducing-hashtags-on-instagram

Answer 2

@user2543857 's answer was good. Unfortunately, the structure of the Instagram data has changed. As of the date of posting this, this will work. Copy/paste into a file on your PHP server and use like: yoursite.com/instarss.php?user=name_of_instagram_user This will return valid XML/RSS feed.

EDIT!! Naturally, the output of the page/JSON has changed with instagram's new look/feel. Here is updated code (June, 2015):

<?php

if (!isset($_GET['user'])) {
    exit('Not a valid RSS feed. You didn\'nt provide an Instagram user. Send one via a GET variable. Example .../instarss.php?user=snoopdogg');
}

header('Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8');

$html = file_get_contents('http://instagram.com/'.$_GET['user'].'/');
$html = strstr($html, '{"static_root');
$html = strstr($html, '</script>', true);
//$html = substr($html,0,-6);
$html = substr($html, 0, -1);

$data = json_decode($html);

// print_r($data->entry_data->ProfilePage[0]->user->media->nodes);

$rss_feed = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"><channel>';
$rss_feed .= '<title>'.$_GET['user'].'\'s Instagram Feed</title><atom:link href="http://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"].'" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /><link>http://instagram.com/'.$_GET['user'].'</link><description>'.$_GET['user'].'\'s Instagram Feed</description>';

foreach($data->entry_data->ProfilePage[0]->user->media->nodes as $node) {

    $rss_feed .= '<item><title>';

    if(isset($node->caption) && $node->caption != '') {
        $rss_feed .= htmlspecialchars($node->caption, ENT_QUOTES, ENT_HTML5);
    } else {
        $rss_feed .= 'photo';
    }

    // pubdate format could also be: "D, d M Y H:i:s T"
    $rss_feed .= '</title><link>https://instagram.com/p/'.$node->code.'/</link><pubDate>'.date("r", $node->date).'</pubDate><dc:creator><![CDATA['.$_GET['user'].']]></dc:creator><description><![CDATA[<img src="'.$node->display_src.'" />]]></description><guid>https://instagram.com/p/'.$node->code.'/</guid></item>';

} // foreach "node" (photo)

$rss_feed .= '</channel></rss>';

echo $rss_feed;
?>

Actually, don't use the above code. I'll try to maintain this Gist in the future.

EDIT December 2016: I'm tired of chasing the every-changing Instagram output only to screen scrape it and have it change a few months later. I'd say just use the API.. If you are still interested in making an RSS feed from a user's page, this Gist should give you an idea of how to do it.

Answer 3

Thanks to torvin for the tip.

Here is how you can get instagram images on your site without using the API.

Create json file from url and username (set this as a cron job, X times per day)

<?
$html = file_get_contents('http://instagram.com/username/');
$html = strstr($html, '["lib');
$html = strstr($html, '</script>', true);
$html = substr($html,0,-6);
file_put_contents("username.json",$html);
?>

Display a few images from json feed

<?
$json = file_get_contents('username.json');
$data = json_decode($json);

$img1 = $data[2][0]->props->userMedia[0]->images->standard_resolution->url;
$img2 = $data[2][0]->props->userMedia[1]->images->standard_resolution->url;
$img3 = $data[2][0]->props->userMedia[2]->images->standard_resolution->url;

print '<img src="'.$img1.'" />';
print '<img src="'.$img2.'" />';
print '<img src="'.$img3.'" />';
?>

Answer 4

You can access the feed for any Instagram user using the /users/user-id/media/recent API endpoint. This endpoint requires an access_token which you can obtain by authorizing some user with Instagram (not necessarily the one you request the feed for). The process for receiving access_token is described here.

So what ink361 may be doing is get an access_token for themselves (their user on Instagram) and use that to make /users/user-id/media/recent requests for any other users' feeds. Simple as that.

Answer 5

If I were ink361, I would just crawl Instagram pages, parse HTML and turn it into RSS. No API, no authorization, no problems.

Answer 6

Unfortunately user2543857's solution above doesn't work anymore. Here's a version that works with the current profile page source though.

Create JSON file from URL and username (set this as a cron job, X times per day)

<?php
    $json = file_get_contents('http://instagram.com/username');
    $json = strstr($json, '{"entry_data"');
    $json = strstr($json, '</script>', true);
    $json = rtrim($json,';');

    file_put_contents("username.json",$json);
?>

Display a few images from JSON feed

<?php
    $json = file_get_contents('username.json');
    $data = json_decode($json,true);

    $img1 = $data['entry_data']['UserProfile'][0]['userMedia'][0]['images']['thumbnail']['url'];
    $img2 = $data['entry_data']['UserProfile'][0]['userMedia'][1]['images']['thumbnail']['url'];
    $img3 = $data['entry_data']['UserProfile'][0]['userMedia'][2]['images']['thumbnail']['url'];

    print '<img src="'.$img1.'" />';
    print '<img src="'.$img2.'" />';
    print '<img src="'.$img3.'" />';
?>

Answer 7

You can get access to your rss feed for instagram by using their API. Their API uses oAuth2 for authentication. I use this method on my personal blog to pull in instagram pics on the homepage. I suspect this is how the ink361 site works. Ink361 will connect to the instagram api and prompt the user with a login via instagram box which they use to allow ink361 access to their instagram account. The ink361 site will cache the token received by instagram once authentication is successfull so they then can repeatedly go back to the instagram api on a periodic basis using the same token for authentication. Bingo you have access to the users data and you can create an rss feed from it.

Answer 8

The answer is simple.
To access user data you just must have valid access token.
The ink361 has an app in social network http://vk.com/app3225087 which stores authenticated users access tokens in db.
Its only left to find in db a valid one and get whatever user data you want