Creating A Simple Instagram Bot

By Jay Nagpaul | 03 Dec 2017

In this blog post we’ll be creating a very simple bot for Instagram, this post assumes a basic understanding and working installation of Python 3.6. By the end of this post, we will have a working Instagram Bot which will be able to target and follow users, in order to convert them into followers themselves.

Getting Started

Let’s first get everything setup.

$ mkdir instabot
$ cd instabot
$ pip install -U git+https://github.com/LevPasha/Instagram-API-python

First Steps

Now we’ll import modules we need and ask for anything we need. You can fill these out in the terminal, and press enter when you are finished.

from InstagramAPI import InstagramAPI
import time

def ask_for_info():
    """
    Ask the user running this script for certain info we need.
    Returns a dictionary with the answers.
    """
    username = input('What\'s your Instagram Username? ')
    password = input('What\'s your Instagram Password? ')
    num_to_follow = input('How many people should we follow per day? ')
    tags_to_use = [input('What tag should I use? (No #) ')]
    while True:
        more = input('Any more? (Leave blank for no) ')
        if more == '':
            break
        tags_to_use.append(more)

    # This does not validate the username or password, so make sure you enter in the right one!

    return {
            'username': username,
            'password': password,
            'num_to_follow': int(num_to_follow),
            'tags_to_use': tags_to_use
        }

Now we can use the username and password we just obtained, to login the bot. This is done by creating the InstagramAPI class, and sending the request to login to Instagram. This function may fail on two major cases:

Incorrect Username or Password
You need to verify the login, this can usually by fixed if you open the app and are prompted to verify the login attempt

def login(username, password):
    api = InstagramAPI(username, password) # Instantiate the class
    api.login() # Send a login request
    return api

Targeting

Now we have a logged in Instagram account, it’s time to find the targets to follow. We’ll search up people who have recently posted a picture using the hashtag(s) you provided before.

def find_targets(api, tag):
    """
    Search for users who have posted a picture with tag, and return a list of user IDs.
    """

    ok = api.tagFeed(tag) # Automatically prints an error
    if not ok:
        raise Exception # Error the script

    resp = api.LastJson
    images = resp['items']

    users = []
    for image in images:
        users.append(
            # We use .get so we can filter out invalid data.
            # Invalid data is rare, but in this case we are prepared
            # pk is ID
            image.get('user', {}).get('pk', '')
        )

    # a list of users from the list of users which id isn't an empty string
    return [u for u in users if u != '']

Following

Great job if you’ve made it this far! Just to recap, so far we can/have:

Imported the required modules
Can login
Can find targets based off of recent hashtags

Now it’s time to follow them, we have to be smart about this as to avoid a ban. So we pause in between follows.

def follow_all(api, targets, time_to_wait):
    """
    Follow all targets, while waiting time_to_wait in seconds
    """
    total_targets = len(targets)
    num = 0
    for t in targets:

        ok = api.follow(t)
        if not ok:
            print('Error while trying to follow ID: %s', t)

        num += 1
        print('Followed %d/%d' % (num, total_targets))
        time.sleep(time_to_wait)

Wrapping it up

Time to bring it all together. We’ll ask for your answers, find the targets, and follow each of them.

if __name__ == '__main__':
    answers = ask_for_info()
    print('Thanks!')
    
    username = answers['username']
    password = answers['password']
    num_to_follow = answers['num_to_follow']
    tags_to_use = answers['tags_to_use']

    api = login(username, password)

    targets = []
    for tag in tags_to_use:
        targets += find_targets(api, tag)
    print('%d Targets Acquired!' % len(targets))

    secs_in_a_day = 86400
    time_to_wait = secs_in_a_day / num_to_follow

    print('Beginning to follow!', 'Make sure you keep an eye on your following count.')
    follow_all(api, targets, time_to_wait)
    print('All Done!')

Thanks for reading. If you have any more bot ideas you would like me to go over, comment them below. You can get the full script here

Credits

LevPasha for writing the InstagramAPI wrapper

instagram bot python tutorial