InstaScrape

[NO LONGER MAINTAINED]

The instagram swiss army knife. Restores all deprecated hashtag functionality and grants public api access from instagram's front end without any of the authorization.

With include_meta_data: true, you can return a posts image, link, text, date, username, hi_res_image, and likes. See the examples and usage pages for different methods and how to use them.

The number of results may vary when using certain methods as this IS NOT an official endpoint.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem "insta_scrape"

For bleeding edge, install from the development branch:

gem "insta_scrape", :git => "https://github.com/dannyvassallo/insta_scrape.git", :branch => "develop"

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install insta_scrape

You'll probably want to use the whenever gem or something similar in order to create hashtag widgets like you once could. Scheduling a job (polling) and storing each post's information in your database/cache is one way to do it.

Standard Hashtag Scrape Example:

#basic use case
scrape_result = InstaScrape.hashtag("test")
scrape_result.each do |post|
  puts post.image
  puts post.link
  puts post.text
end

Long Scrape a hashtag and get additional metadata:

#you can set include_meta_data to false if
#you want to speed up the scrape
scrape_result = InstaScrape.long_scrape_hashtag('test', 1, include_meta_data: true)
scrape_result.each do |post|
  puts post.image
  puts post.link
  puts post.text
  puts post.date
  puts post.username
  puts post.hi_res_image
  puts post.likes
end

Create an issue and I'll respond as soon as I can. If it's a feature request and you've got some free time -- PRs are gladly welcomed.

❗️Bug reports and pull requests are ALWAYS welcome on GitHub❗️. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.