Instagram for Slogger

Posted on 2014-09-04

In early 2013, I discovered Slogger and loved the idea of journalling about more than just what I had to say. What I was listening to at a given time is just as important as what I was thinking. However, there wasn't an ideal way to log Instagram posts without other dependencies, and so I took a stab at writing my first plugin.

Update

As of June 2016, Instagram has changed their API and no longer allows this script to work. Sorry :(

I didn't know ruby and quickly learned how bad some API documentation can be, but I wanted this plugin more than all the others. After fiddling with it for an evening, I was able to log Instagram posts with more than just a photo, including:

• number of likes
• comments
• date of post, not the date Slogger ran
• location data (including place name if you used Foursquare checkin)

The last point is by far my favorite. I can look at a map over the last year and see all the Instagram photos I've taken and where I took them

I also wanted to import photos that I had already taken. The plugin now will let you set backdate: true and will log the last 20 photos that you had posted on Instagram. Once it's finished, it'll automatically set itself to false to prevent duplicate posts¹.

Setup is fairly straight forward. I create a local server, which runs you through the Instagram OAuth flow. After you've finished, you simply paste in the access token, and it'll run from there

> ./slogger -o instagram
Initializing Slogger v2 (2.1.14)...
08:01:18      InstagramLogger: Instagram requires configuration, please run from the command line and follow the prompts

------------- Instagram Configuration --------------

Slogger will now open an authorization page in your default web browser. Copy the code you receive and return here.

Press Enter to continue...

Last night I finally did a pull request and it went live this morning. You can check out and download the latest Slogger on Github. If you find any issues or bugs, please send them my way. Enjoy!

Tags: automation slogger dayone photos