Getting basic information from Instagram using PHP

Question

$url = 'https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/XXXX?access_token=XXXX';
echo json_decode(file_get_contents($url))->{'followed_by'};

I am using this code and I do not understand what the issue is. I'm new to PHP so excuse the newbie mistake. I'm trying to get the "followed_by" to display on its own. I've managed to get Facebook's "like" and twitter's followers to display this way.

Answer 1

In case you need to grab follower count (or other fields) without logging in, Instagram is nice enough to put them in JSON inside the page source:

$raw = file_get_contents('https://www.instagram.com/USERNAME'); //replace with user
preg_match('/\"edge_followed_by\"\:\s?\{\"count\"\:\s?([0-9]+)/',$raw,$m);
print intval($m[1]);

//returns "123"

Hope that helps.

24 May 2016 Updated to be more tolerant of spaces in JSON.

19 Apr 2018 Updated to use new "edge_" prefix.

Answer 2

According to the Instagram API Docs, followed_by is a child of counts which is a child of data.

https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/1574083/?access_token=ACCESS-TOKEN

Returns:

{
"data": {
    "id": "1574083",
    "username": "snoopdogg",
    "full_name": "Snoop Dogg",
    "profile_picture": "http://distillery.s3.amazonaws.com/profiles/profile_1574083_75sq_1295469061.jpg",
    "bio": "This is my bio",
    "website": "http://snoopdogg.com",
    "counts": {
        "media": 1320,
        "follows": 420,
        "followed_by": 3410
    }
}

The following should therefore work.

<?php 
$url = 'https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/XXXX?access_token=XXXX';
$api_response = file_get_contents($url);
$record = json_decode($api_response);
echo $record->data->counts->followed_by;

// if nothing is echoed try
echo '<pre>' . print_r($api_response, true) . '</pre>';
echo '<pre>' . print_r($record, true) . '</pre>';
// to see what is in the $api_response and $record object

Answer 3

Try this..

<?php 
$instagram = "https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/xxxxx/?access_token=xxxxx";
$instagram_follows = json_decode(file_get_contents($instagram))->data->counts->followed_by;
echo $instagram_follows;
?>