Where do I find the Instagram media ID of a image

Here's an even better way:

No API calls! And I threw in converting a media_id to a shortcode as an added bonus.

Based on slang's amazing work for figuring out the conversion. Nathan's work converting base10 to base64 in php. And rgbflawed's work converting it back the other way (with a modified alphabet). #teameffort

function mediaid_to_shortcode($mediaid){

    if(strpos($mediaid, '_') !== false){
        $pieces = explode('_', $mediaid);
        $mediaid = $pieces[0];
        $userid = $pieces[1];
    }

    $alphabet = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789-_';
    $shortcode = '';
    while($mediaid > 0){
        $remainder = $mediaid % 64;
        $mediaid = ($mediaid-$remainder) / 64;
        $shortcode = $alphabet{$remainder} . $shortcode;
    };

    return $shortcode;

}

function shortcode_to_mediaid($shortcode){

    $alphabet='ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789-_';

    $mediaid = 0;

    foreach(str_split($shortcode) as $letter) {
        $mediaid = ($mediaid*64) + strpos($alphabet, $letter);
    }

    return $mediaid;

}

So the most up-voted "Better Way" is a little deprecated so here is my edit and other solutions:

Javascript + jQuery

$.ajax({
    type: 'GET',
    url: 'http://api.instagram.com/oembed?callback=&url='+Url, //You must define 'Url' for yourself
    cache: false,
    dataType: 'json',
    jsonp: false,
    success: function (data) {
       var MediaID = data.media_id;
   }
});

PHP

$your_url = "" //Input your url
$api = file_get_contents("http://api.instagram.com/oembed?callback=&url=" . your_url);      
$media_id = json_decode($api,true)['media_id'];

So, this is just an updated version of @George's code and is currently working. However, I made other solutions, and some even avoid an ajax request:

Shortcode Ajax Solution

Certain Instagram urls use a shortened url syntax. This allows the client to just use the shortcode in place of the media id if requested properly.

An example shortcode url looks like this: https://www.instagram.com/p/Y7GF-5vftL/

The Y7GF-5vftL is your shortcode for the picture.

Using Regexp:

var url = "https://www.instagram.com/p/Y7GF-5vftL/"; //Define this yourself
var Key = /p\/(.*?)\/$/.exec(url)[1];

In the same scope, Key will contain your shortcode. Now to request, let's say, a low res picture using this shortcode, you would do something like the following:

    $.ajax({
        type: "GET",
        dataType: "json",
        url: "https://api.instagram.com/v1/media/shortcode/" + Key + "?access_token=" + access_token, //Define your 'access_token'
        success: function (RawData) {
            var LowResURL = RawData.data.images.low_resolution.url;
        }
    });

There is lots of other useful information, including the media id, in the returned RawData structure. Log it or look up the api documentation to see.

Shortcode Conversion Solution

You can actually convert your shortcode to the id fairly easily! Here's a simple way to do it in javascript:

function shortcodeToInstaID(Shortcode) {
      var char;
      var id = 0;
      var alphabet = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789-_';
      for (var i = 0; i < Shortcode.length; i++) {
          char = Shortcode[i];
          id = (id * 64) + alphabet.indexOf(char);
      }
      return id;
  }

Note: If you want a more robust node.js solution, or want to see how you would convert it back, check out @Slang's module on npm.

Full Page Solution

So what if you have the URL to a full Instagram page like: https://www.instagram.com/p/BAYYJBwi0Tssh605CJP2bmSuRpm_Jt7V_S8q9A0/

Well, you can actually read the HTML to find a meta property that contains the Media ID. There are also a couple other algorithms you can perform on the URL itself to get it, but I believe that requires too much effort so we will keep it simple. Either query the meta tag al:ios:url or iterate through the html. Since reading metatags is posted all over, I'll show you how to iterate.

NOTE: This is a little unstable and is vulnerable to being patched. This method does NOT work on a page that uses a preview box. So if you give it the current HTML when you click on a picture in someone's profile, this WILL break and return a bad Media ID.

function getMediaId(HTML_String) {
  var MediaID = "";
  var e = HTML_String.indexOf("al:ios:url") + 42; //HTML_String is a variable that contains all of the HTML text as a string for the current document. There are many different ways to retrieve this so look one up. 
  for (var i = e; i <= e + 100; i++) { //100 should never come close to being reached
      if (request.source.charAt(i) == "\"")
         break;
      MediaID += request.source.charAt(i);
  }
  return MediaID;
}

And there you go, a bunch of different ways to use Instagram's api to get a Media ID. Hope one fixes your struggles.


Here's a better way:

http://api.instagram.com/oembed?url=http://instagram.com/p/Y7GF-5vftL/

Render as json object and you can easily extract media id from it ---

For instance, in PHP

$api = file_get_contents("http://api.instagram.com/oembed?url=http://instagram.com/p/Y7‌​GF-5vftL/");      
$apiObj = json_decode($api,true);      
$media_id = $apiObj['media_id'];

For instance, in JS

$.ajax({     
    type: 'GET',     
    url: 'http://api.instagram.com/oembed?callback=&url=http://instagram.com/p/Y7GF-5vftL‌​/',     
    cache: false,     
    dataType: 'jsonp',     
    success: function(data) {           
        try{              
            var media_id = data[0].media_id;          
        }catch(err){}   
    } 
});

Tags:

Instagram

Instagram Api

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