Where do I find the Instagram media ID of a image

Question

I\'m am looking for the MediaID of an Instagram image which has been uploaded. It should look like

1234567894561231236_33215652

Answer 1

So the most up-voted "Better Way" is a little deprecated so here is my edit and other solutions:

Javascript + jQuery

$.ajax({
    type: 'GET',
    url: 'http://api.instagram.com/oembed?callback=&url='+Url, //You must define 'Url' for yourself
    cache: false,
    dataType: 'json',
    jsonp: false,
    success: function (data) {
       var MediaID = data.media_id;
   }
});

PHP

$your_url = "" //Input your url
$api = file_get_contents("http://api.instagram.com/oembed?callback=&url=" . your_url);      
$media_id = json_decode($api,true)['media_id'];

So, this is just an updated version of @George's code and is currently working. However, I made other solutions, and some even avoid an ajax request:

---

Shortcode Ajax Solution

Certain Instagram urls use a shortened url syntax. This allows the client to just use the shortcode in place of the media id if requested properly.

An example shortcode url looks like this: https://www.instagram.com/p/Y7GF-5vftL/

The Y7GF-5vftL is your shortcode for the picture.

Using Regexp:

var url = "https://www.instagram.com/p/Y7GF-5vftL/"; //Define this yourself
var Key = /p\/(.*?)\/$/.exec(url)[1];

In the same scope, Key will contain your shortcode. Now to request, let's say, a low res picture using this shortcode, you would do something like the following:

    $.ajax({
        type: "GET",
        dataType: "json",
        url: "https://api.instagram.com/v1/media/shortcode/" + Key + "?access_token=" + access_token, //Define your 'access_token'
        success: function (RawData) {
            var LowResURL = RawData.data.images.low_resolution.url;
        }
    });

There is lots of other useful information, including the media id, in the returned RawData structure. Log it or look up the api documentation to see.

---

Shortcode Conversion Solution

You can actually convert your shortcode to the id fairly easily! Here's a simple way to do it in javascript:

function shortcodeToInstaID(Shortcode) {
      var char;
      var id = 0;
      var alphabet = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789-_';
      for (var i = 0; i < Shortcode.length; i++) {
          char = Shortcode[i];
          id = (id * 64) + alphabet.indexOf(char);
      }
      return id;
  }

Note: If you want a more robust node.js solution, or want to see how you would convert it back, check out @Slang's module on npm.

---

Full Page Solution

So what if you have the URL to a full Instagram page like: https://www.instagram.com/p/BAYYJBwi0Tssh605CJP2bmSuRpm_Jt7V_S8q9A0/

Well, you can actually read the HTML to find a meta property that contains the Media ID. There are also a couple other algorithms you can perform on the URL itself to get it, but I believe that requires too much effort so we will keep it simple. Either query the meta tag al:ios:url or iterate through the html. Since reading metatags is posted all over, I'll show you how to iterate.

NOTE: This is a little unstable and is vulnerable to being patched. This method does NOT work on a page that uses a preview box. So if you give it the current HTML when you click on a picture in someone's profile, this WILL break and return a bad Media ID.

function getMediaId(HTML_String) {
  var MediaID = "";
  var e = HTML_String.indexOf("al:ios:url") + 42; //HTML_String is a variable that contains all of the HTML text as a string for the current document. There are many different ways to retrieve this so look one up. 
  for (var i = e; i <= e + 100; i++) { //100 should never come close to being reached
      if (request.source.charAt(i) == "\"")
         break;
      MediaID += request.source.charAt(i);
  }
  return MediaID;
}

---

And there you go, a bunch of different ways to use Instagram's api to get a Media ID. Hope one fixes your struggles.