Instagram API to fetch pictures with specific hashtags

Question

I want to get all the pictures with a specific hash tag from Instagram using PHP. How can I do that?

Answer 1

Firstly, the Instagram API endpoint "tags" required OAuth authentication.

You can query results for a particular hashtag (snowy in this case) using the following url

It is rate limited to 5000 (X-Ratelimit-Limit:5000) per hour

https://api.instagram.com/v1/tags/snowy/media/recent

Sample response

{
  "pagination":  {
    "next_max_tag_id": "1370433362010",
    "deprecation_warning": "next_max_id and min_id are deprecated for this endpoint; use min_tag_id and max_tag_id instead",
    "next_max_id": "1370433362010",
    "next_min_id": "1370443976800",
    "min_tag_id": "1370443976800",
    "next_url": "https://api.instagram.com/v1/tags/snowy/media/recent?access_token=40480112.1fb234f.4866541998fd4656a2e2e2beaa5c4bb1&max_tag_id=1370433362010"
  },
  "meta":  {
    "code": 200
  },
  "data":  [
     {
      "attribution": null,
      "tags":  [
        "snowy"
      ],
      "type": "image",
      "location": null,
      "comments":  {
        "count": 0,
        "data":  []
      },
      "filter": null,
      "created_time": "1370418343",
      "link": "http://instagram.com/p/aK1yrGRi3l/",
      "likes":  {
        "count": 1,
        "data":  [
           {
            "username": "iri92lol",
            "profile_picture": "http://images.ak.instagram.com/profiles/profile_404174490_75sq_1370417509.jpg",
            "id": "404174490",
            "full_name": "Iri"
          }
        ]
      },
      "images":  {
        "low_resolution":  {
          "url": "http://distilleryimage1.s3.amazonaws.com/ecf272a2cdb311e2990322000a9f192c_6.jpg",
          "width": 306,
          "height": 306
        },
        "thumbnail":  {
          "url": "http://distilleryimage1.s3.amazonaws.com/ecf272a2cdb311e2990322000a9f192c_5.jpg",
          "width": 150,
          "height": 150
        },
        "standard_resolution":  {
          "url": "http://distilleryimage1.s3.amazonaws.com/ecf272a2cdb311e2990322000a9f192c_7.jpg",
          "width": 612,
          "height": 612
        }
      },
      "users_in_photo":  [],
      "caption":  {
        "created_time": "1370418353",
        "text": "#snowy",
        "from":  {
          "username": "iri92lol",
          "profile_picture": "http://images.ak.instagram.com/profiles/profile_404174490_75sq_1370417509.jpg",
          "id": "404174490",
          "full_name": "Iri"
        },
        "id": "471425773832908504"
      },
      "user_has_liked": false,
      "id": "471425689728724453_404174490",
      "user":  {
        "username": "iri92lol",
        "website": "",
        "profile_picture": "http://images.ak.instagram.com/profiles/profile_404174490_75sq_1370417509.jpg",
        "full_name": "Iri",
        "bio": "",
        "id": "404174490"
      }
    }
}

You can play around here :

https://apigee.com/console/instagram?req=%7B%22resource%22%3A%22get_tags_media_recent%22%2C%22params%22%3A%7B%22query%22%3A%7B%7D%2C%22template%22%3A%7B%22tag-name%22%3A%22snowy%22%7D%2C%22headers%22%3A%7B%7D%2C%22body%22%3A%7B%22attachmentFormat%22%3A%22mime%22%2C%22attachmentContentDisposition%22%3A%22form-data%22%7D%7D%2C%22verb%22%3A%22get%22%7D

You need to use "Authentication" as OAuth 2 and will be prompted to signin via Instagram. Post that you might have to reneter the "tag-name" in "Template" section.

All the pagination related data is available in the "pagination" parameter in the response and use it's "next_url" to query for the next set of result.