I'm looking to create a Python script that can pull the most recent images from various Instagram accounts. However, I'm concerned about the potential issues with using automation given how sensitive Meta is with their platform. Specifically, I'm considering a method where the script launches Firefox, logs into Instagram, and navigates to the different profiles I'm interested in. I plan to use 'ctrl+i' to extract media from the page. Should I be worried about running into CAPTCHA challenges or any automation flags while doing this?
2 Answers
Honestly, the presence of an API doesn't limit your options much. If a website is public, you can typically scrape it, but things get tricky if you need to log in. Here's a basic idea of how scraping works: you send an HTTP request to the desired URL, get back the raw HTML, then use a DOM parser to sift through it. Look for the specific class for the image you want, grab that element, and download it. I’m not a Python guru myself, but if you’re familiar with it, you could probably get this done in a few lines of code.
You can also achieve similar results using curl if you're comfortable with that tool!
You could always just try it out and see what happens! But it's smart to check first to avoid any common pitfalls.
Good point! Just remember that some sites might load their content with JavaScript, so a basic GET might not give you what you're looking for. For something like Instagram, you might want to check out Python libraries like Selenium to handle that.