Instagram fetching tag recent user media after a max_id

Question

Lets asume I fetch recent user media for a tag... And that I am able of storing in a database the information that it is returned to me by the API.

The media ids are something like [0-9]+_[0-9]+, and lets asume that one day later, I want to fetch only new data, so I order the media, that I stored in my DB, by instagram's created time, then I select the one that its the newest and grab its id something like '121231232213123_12312312312'.

Then I use that Id as the max_id attribute for the API endpoint https://api.instagram.com/v1/tags/{tag_name}/media/recent, I would assume, that I would get new user_media or an empty array if no one had upload anything.

The thing is that I receive all the same data, its like if it not filtering my results nor using the max_id.

is this correct behavior or should I do something else?

thanks,

ps: I posted this same issue also on google groups:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/instagram-api-developers/QyjCORkjr3I

Answer 1

I found 2 tips, that can be useful for you:

1. You should use min_id, in order to get new media. max_id will return photos, older that the one with this id.
2. It's better to use live API in order to update your DB with new photos dynamically.

UPDATE:

Instagram live API is deprecated now. However you can now use webhooks subscription system which is very similar to facebook. Details can be found in this answer.