[Golang] Get Instagram Following and Followers
Interesting small program to get the JSON format data of following and followers of a specific Instagram user.
The procedure of reading JSON data is the same as the Instagram story API [1]. Please read the post if you are not familiar with the API.
In this program only Go standard library is used, no third-party packages.
To access the Instagram API via local Go program, you need to login Instagram and get the following information from your browser:
- ds_user_id
- sessionid
- csrftoken
Please see this SO answer to get above values on Chrome browser.

Moreover, you need to know the user id of the specific user, please read my previous post to get the id of the user. [3]
After you get the values, you can get the JSON response from the following code:
package igfollow
import (
"encoding/json"
"errors"
"net/http"
"strconv"
"strings"
)
const UrlFollowers = `https://i.instagram.com/api/v1/friendships/{{USERID}}/followers/`
const UrlFollowing = `https://i.instagram.com/api/v1/friendships/{{USERID}}/following/`
type RawFollow struct {
Users []FollowUser `json:"users"`
BigList bool `json:"big_list"` // if false, no next_max_id in response
PageSize int64 `json:"page_size"`
Status string `json:"status"`
NextMaxId string `json:"next_max_id"` // used for pagination if list is too big
}
type FollowUser struct {
Pk int64 `json:"pk"`
Username string `json:"username"`
}
// id: Id of the Instagram user whose followers to be retrieved.
//
// ds_user_id, sessionid, csrftoken: Login Instagram and get these three cookie
// values from Chrome Developer Tools. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/44773079
func GetFollowers(id, ds_user_id, sessionid, csrftoken string) (rf RawFollow, err error) {
url := strings.Replace(UrlFollowers, "{{USERID}}", id, 1)
rf, err = GetFollowResponse(url, ds_user_id, sessionid, csrftoken)
if err != nil {
return
}
// If the list is too big and next_max_id is not ""
for rf.NextMaxId != "" {
urln := url + "?max_id=" + rf.NextMaxId
rfn, err := GetFollowResponse(urln, ds_user_id, sessionid, csrftoken)
if err != nil {
return rf, err
}
rf.Users = append(rf.Users, rfn.Users...)
rf.NextMaxId = rfn.NextMaxId
}
return
}
// id: Id of the Instagram user whose following to be retrieved.
//
// ds_user_id, sessionid, csrftoken: Login Instagram and get these three cookie
// values from Chrome Developer Tools. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/44773079
func GetFollowing(id, ds_user_id, sessionid, csrftoken string) (rf RawFollow, err error) {
url := strings.Replace(UrlFollowing, "{{USERID}}", id, 1)
rf, err = GetFollowResponse(url, ds_user_id, sessionid, csrftoken)
if err != nil {
return
}
// If the list is too big and next_max_id is not ""
for rf.NextMaxId != "" {
urln := url + "?max_id=" + rf.NextMaxId
rfn, err := GetFollowResponse(urln, ds_user_id, sessionid, csrftoken)
if err != nil {
return rf, err
}
rf.Users = append(rf.Users, rfn.Users...)
rf.NextMaxId = rfn.NextMaxId
}
return
}
func GetFollowResponse(url, ds_user_id, sessionid, csrftoken string) (rf RawFollow, err error) {
req, err := http.NewRequest("GET", url, nil)
if err != nil {
return
}
req.AddCookie(&http.Cookie{Name: "ds_user_id", Value: ds_user_id})
req.AddCookie(&http.Cookie{Name: "sessionid", Value: sessionid})
req.AddCookie(&http.Cookie{Name: "csrftoken", Value: csrftoken})
req.Header.Set("User-Agent", "Instagram 10.3.2 (iPhone7,2; iPhone OS 9_3_3; en_US; en-US; scale=2.00; 750x1334) AppleWebKit/420+")
client := &http.Client{}
resp, err := client.Do(req)
if err != nil {
return
}
defer resp.Body.Close()
if resp.StatusCode != 200 {
err = errors.New("resp.StatusCode: " + strconv.Itoa(resp.StatusCode))
return
}
dec := json.NewDecoder(resp.Body)
err = dec.Decode(&rf)
return
}
Example:
package igfollow
import (
"os"
"testing"
)
func ExampleGetFollowing(t *testing.T) {
rf, err := GetFollowing(
os.Getenv("IG_TEST_USER_ID"),
os.Getenv("IG_DS_USER_ID"),
os.Getenv("IG_SESSIONID"),
os.Getenv("IG_CSRFTOKEN"))
if err != nil {
t.Error(err)
return
}
t.Log(rf)
t.Log(len(rf.Users))
}
func ExampleGetFollowers(t *testing.T) {
rf, err := GetFollowers(
os.Getenv("IG_TEST_USER_ID"),
os.Getenv("IG_DS_USER_ID"),
os.Getenv("IG_SESSIONID"),
os.Getenv("IG_CSRFTOKEN"))
if err != nil {
t.Error(err)
return
}
t.Log(rf)
t.Log(len(rf.Users))
}
The full code is also available on my GitHub repo [2].
Tested on: Ubuntu Linux 17.10, Go 1.9.4.
References:
[1] | Chrome IG Story — Bribing the Instagram Story API with cookies 🍪🍪🍪 |
[2] | GitHub - siongui/goigfollow: Get Instagram following and followers in Go |
[3] | [Golang] Get Instagram User ID |