Instagram is_private regex

Question

I want to check if a user is private on Instagram. When searching on the internet I found this: Getting basic information from Instagram using PHP

$raw = file_get_contents('https://www.instagram.com/USERNAME'); 
preg_match('/\"followed_by\"\:\s?\{\"count\"\:\s?([0-9]+)/',$raw,$m);
print intval($m[1]);

Which uses a regex to check the number of followers for a user.
Now I'm trying to use a regex to check if a user is private or not but I'm unable to figure it out. The field is stated in the JSON response as is_private but I have not been able to get it working.

Is this the right way to do it?

Do you really expect us to sign up to Instagram just to learn what is the difference? — Andreas, May 30 '18 at 20:18
This is `JSON`, so please use appropriate functions like `json_loads()`, etc. — Jan, May 30 '18 at 20:28

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 30 '18 at 23:29

Your not going to want to do that with Regex, instead check the web page

$instagramPage = strip_tags(file_get_contents('http://instagram.com/Username'));
if (strpos($instagramPage,'"is_private":true') !== false) {
    return 'Account is private';
} else {
    return 'Account is public';
}

Instagram is_private regex

1 Answers1