Instagram Feed in website - using Instagram Basic Display API

Question

I am trying to show instagram feed(of a specific account) on website using the developer documentation at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-basic-display-api/getting-started . instagram-basic-display-api seems supporting "Getting an Instagram user’s images, videos, and albums".

Manually through browser I could get the Authorization code by clicking "Authorize" in the Authorization Window. But it's mentioned in the post that "Authorization codes are short-lived and are only valid for 1 hour.". And hence I couldn't reuse the same authorization code for all the requests and every hour I need to generate a new one. Is there a way or javascript sdk that allows to make the request through code(javascript) to generate authorization code without Authorization Window?

Answer 1

Facebook will let you generate a CODE through the browser (GET). Then you will need to exchange mentioned CODE for a TOKEN, but now through cURL request (you can use POSTMAN, for example). as in Step 5: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-basic-display-api/getting-started

If you're using Postman, make sure you put the required parameters in the body as x-www-form-urlencoded.

After Step 5 you may receive an access_token, which you will then be able to query the user. It's a short-lived TOKEN.

As for your question, you would then be able to exchange this short-lived token for a long-lived one, as in https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-basic-display-api/guides/long-lived-access-tokens.

But there are some caveats:

1. your app must be granted instagram_graph_user_profile
2. the exchange should only be made in server-side code
3. expired short-lived tokens cannot be exchanged
4. long-lived tokens only last 60 days, they need to be refreshed once in a while
5. if one expires, you can't refresh it