cannot access followers on instagram sandbox

Question

I'm trying to test my Instagram app in sandbox, I'm trying to get some stats and alerts on new/lost followers ... but is not possible because of sandbox limitations; followers to the authAccount are hidden. I understand I cannot access accounts out of sandbox as main accounts, but I should be able to check ALL followers and followings.

Please Instagram team fix this!

I want to test pagination, but this is impossible because of sandbox limits.

As it is set now,

https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/self/follows?access_token=XXX&count=100

returns just an empty result

Answer 1

It's not broken, this is by design.

You need two things:

1. Include follower_list as one of the scopes when you authenticate
2. Add some users to your Client's Sandbox

Once you have the appropriate scope and a few users in your client's sandbox you can have the sandbox users follow each other. Queries generated by a sandboxed client will return only users that you manually added to the sandbox.

It's kind of confusing but that's what got me going.

Answer 2

Probably it because of sandbox limitation, recently faced smth similar http://progrnotes.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/instagram-api-search-by-tag-doesnt.html.

I think you need to have test users in folowers, and you will be able to see them via api

Answer 3

It's due to the fact that you're in Sandbox mode. I can't see it either. You'll need to apply for the permissions starting December 3 to gain access to the followers list scope.

Answer 4

I think there actually is an issue. Even with correctly configured OAuth permissions in sandboxed mode!

Today, there are several endpoints that deals with followers.

self/follows

Example:

https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/self/follows?access_token=ACCESS-TOKEN

self/followed-by

https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/self/followed-by?access_token=ACCESS-TOKEN

Now, obviously the API uses the access-token to get the proper information. So, the only list it can return here is the list of users that the current authenticated user follows or is followed by.

In the previous API, there was an API endpoint that looked like this

/users/[user-id]/follows?access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN

This endpoint is still valid but works exactly the same as self/follows and self/following, that is, only useful for the current authenticated user. That is, in-sandboxed-mode! Will post if I can get passed the find folks at the Instagram review board. (This is I guess the only way to properly test this.) However, there are no documentation of this use of the API so it may very well not work.

This leaves us with the following API endpoints:

{user-id}/relationship

Example

v1/users/{user-id}/relationship?access_token=ACCESS-TOKEN

Again, this will obviously only return the status of the relationship between the currently authenticated user and the user with the user-id supplied in the url.