Today I was trying to scrape Instagram, so that I can extract some major information about the users without logging in.
Okay, I was trying to get the images of private users too.
I know it isn’t possible, but there is nothing wrong in hacking and trying to do things which are not possible.
This is the third or fourth time I am using Instagram in my life, and after logging into the account, I visited Developer’s Section just after checking some images of Russian Girls 😀
Jokes apart 😀
Now, comming to the point.
I wrote a Node.js script to collection all the information of a user but without using Instagram’s API, and when I was trying to crawl Instagram, one thing that caused problem was Status Code : 301 .
Above, the first command is executed without using following-redirects and before executing the second command I added it to the code. Since, “/javascript” isn’t available on Instagram. So, it shown Error 404.
The last command is execute with the name of a user “/ritika” and the interesting fact is the user has a private Id on Instagram, and the user Id is extracted without using Instagram API.
I tried to figure out but my methods didn’t worked. So, I did the following steps to resolve my problem.
npm install following-redirects
After installing, I copied it from node_modules
and pasted it into node_modules :-p
Now, all you have to do is to replace :
var http = require('http');
with
var http = require('follow-redirects').http;
and
var https = require('http');
with
var https = require('follow-redirects').https;
BOOM 😀 You can run your code now.
You can start the project at : Follow Redirects or download it directly Code
If you want to use git clone, in that case, copy the following lines :
git clone https://github.com/CodeDotJS/follow-redirects.git
P.S : When you crawl Facebook, even without using their API, for example collecting user id. Everything will work fine. But while using Instagram you’ll get this error.
Thanks 🙂 I’ll post the script when I complete it.
Rishi Giri 