Scrape Instagram Web Hashtag Posts

Question

I'm trying to scrape the number of posts to a given hashtag (#castles) and populate a Google Sheet cell using ImportXML.

I tried copying the Xpath from Chrome and paste it to the ImportXML parameter in the cell like this:

=ImportXML("https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/castels/", "//*[@id="react-root"]/section/main/header/div[2]/div/div[2]/span/span")

I saw there is a problem with the quotation marks so I also tried:

=ImportXML("https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/castels/", "//*[@id='react-root']/section/main/header/div[2]/div/div[2]/span/span")

Nevertheless, both return an error.

What am I doing wrong?

P.S. I am aware of the Xpath to the meta tag description "//meta[@name='description']/@content" however I would like to scrape the exact number of posts and not an abbreviated number.

Would an apps script based solution work or are you looking for it to be accomplished only by using the =IMPORTXML function? I figured out the formula but it doesn't work with the caveat of Result too large =REGEXEXTRACT(ImportXML("https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/cats/", "//body/script[1]"),"edge_hashtag_to_media[[:punct:]][[:punct:]][[:punct:]][[:punct:]]count[[:punct:]][[:punct:]](\d+)\,[[:punct:]]page_info[[:punct:]]") Edit note: doesn't work — Sourabh Choraria
Here you go - this of course, is just an example implementation - function hashCount() { var url = 'instagram.com/explore/tags/cats'; var response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url).getContentText(); var regex = /(edge_hashtag_to_media":{"count":)(\d+)(,"page_info":)/gm; var count = regex.exec(response)[2]; Logger.log(count) } — Sourabh Choraria

Sourabh Choraria Sourabh Choraria · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-23T17:25:40

Try this -

function hashCount() {
  var url = 'instagram.com/explore/tags/cats/';
  var response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url, {muteHttpExceptions: true}).getContentText();
  var regex = /(edge_hashtag_to_media":{"count":)(\d+)(,"page_info":)/gm;
  var count = regex.exec(response)[2];
  Logger.log(count);
}

Demo -

I've added muteHttpExceptions: true which was not added in my comment above. Hope this helps.

Scrape Instagram Web Hashtag Posts

1 Answers