python instagram api user_recent_media returns None

Question

looking at the documentation

api.user_recent_media(userid='1034466',count=1)

returns

([], None)

What to do?

p.s. btw get userid from http://jelled.com/instagram/lookup-user-id

Answer 1

Basically you should user_idinstead of userid.

However I might help you go a little further with what you're trying to do, since I've done the same thing (retrieve instagram media from a user) some weeks ago:

Definition:

class InstagramFeed:
    api = InstagramAPI(client_id=settings.SOCIAL_AUTH_INSTAGRAM_KEY,
                       client_secret=settings.SOCIAL_AUTH_INSTAGRAM_SECRET)
    logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)

    def get_user_id(self, user_name):
        users = self.api.user_search(q=user_name)
        for user in users:
            if user_name == user.username:
                return user.id
            else:
                self.logger.error('Instagram User with username {0} NOT FOUND!', user_name)
                raise Exception('Instagram User with username {0} NOT FOUND!', user_name)

    @classmethod
    def get_media(cls, user_name, count=8):
        user_id = cls.get_user_id(cls, user_name)
        if user_id is None:
            return None

        recent_media, next_ = cls.api.user_recent_media(user_id=user_id, count=count)
        return recent_media


class InstagramEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):
    def default(self, o):
        if type(o) in (instagram.models.Comment, instagram.models.Image,
                       instagram.models.Location, instagram.models.Media,
                       instagram.models.MediaShortcode, instagram.models.Point,
                       instagram.models.Relationship, instagram.models.Tag,
                       instagram.models.User, instagram.models.Video, instagram.models.UserInPhoto,
                       instagram.models.Position):
            return o.__dict__
        elif isinstance(o, datetime.datetime):
            unix_time = time.mktime(o.timetuple())
            return str(unix_time)
        else:
            return default(o)

usage:

media = InstagramFeed.get_media(user_name=user_name, count=8)

imports (I'm using it within a django1.8 project):

from instagram.client import InstagramAPI
from django.conf import settings
from bson.json_util import default

import json
import logging
import instagram.models
import time
import datetime