Facebook API Graph. Instagram. How to get user profile picture knowing only username?

0
votes

I'm implementing webhook subscription to receive notifications about new comments on Instagram media (so, the solution assumes server side environment). Webhook payload contains a comment ID. Fetching a comment node via Facebbok API Graph call I can get author's username. From this point I need to get author's profile picture.

Currently I can use Business Discovery API to get information about user by username like this

GET graph.facebook.com/%PAGEID%
    ?fields=business_discovery.username(%USERNAME%){...fields...}

But this method is working only for Instagram Business accounts.

Recently, this task can be accomplished with https://www.instagram.com/%USERNAME%/?__a=1 call, but now this request requires authorization.

1
facebook-graph-apiinstagram-graph-api

1 Answers

0
votes

You cannot get the user profile picture by using the username, because facebook denies querying users by their username:

(#803) Cannot query users by their username

Even if, indeed, getting the facebook picture of a user does not require an access token or any permissions.

You need to get the userid (10000xxxxxxxxxx), and then you'd be able to:

GET https://graph.facebook.com/v3.2/{userid}/picture