Searching for users by their username
The Instagram API doesn't provide a way to lookup a user by it's username, so you must first may a search for the username, and then get the ID from the search result that matches the username. In Skybrud.Social, you can do this through the Search method.
The method has a number of overloads, where the most simple overload just takes the search query as a parameter (aka the username). Other overloads lets you customize the search a bit more.
At the time of writing, the method will return up to the 50 first users matching your search query. Unfortunately the Instagram API doesn't support pagination, so you won't be able to fetch more than the 50 first users.
Anyways, here is some example code:
@using Skybrud.Social.Instagram.Models.Users
@using Skybrud.Social.Instagram.Responses.Users
@inherits WebViewPage<Skybrud.Social.Instagram.InstagramService>
@{
InstagramSearchUsersResponse response = Model.Users.Search("bacon");
foreach (InstagramUserSummary user in response.Body.Data) {
<p>
<strong>@(user.FullName ?? user.Username)</strong>
<span>(@user.Id)</span>
</p>
}
}
If you for some reason want to limit the amount of users returned to - lets say 20 - you could use one of the overloaded methods - either by specifying the limit/count as the second parameter:
@using Skybrud.Social.Instagram.Models.Users
@using Skybrud.Social.Instagram.Responses.Users
@inherits WebViewPage<Skybrud.Social.Instagram.InstagramService>
@{
InstagramSearchUsersResponse response = Model.Users.Search("bacon", 20);
foreach (InstagramUserSummary user in response.Body.Data) {
<p>
<strong>@(user.FullName ?? user.Username)</strong>
<span>(@user.Id)</span>
</p>
}
}
Or by specifying an instance of InstagramGetUserSearchOptions (this is actually what Skybrud.Social uses under the hood):
@using Skybrud.Social.Instagram.Models.Users
@using Skybrud.Social.Instagram.Options.Users
@using Skybrud.Social.Instagram.Responses.Users
@inherits WebViewPage<Skybrud.Social.Instagram.InstagramService>
@{
InstagramSearchUsersResponse response = Model.Users.Search(new InstagramGetUserSearchOptions {
Query = "bacon",
Count = 20
});
foreach (InstagramUserSummary user in response.Body.Data) {
<p>
<strong>@(user.FullName ?? user.Username)</strong>
<span>(@user.Id)</span>
</p>
}
}
The class currently only lets you specify the Query and Count properties, so not much extra here than the first two overloads.
Search for a specific user
In the scenario described earlier, if you just want to search for a specific user - eg. to find the ID of a user based on a username, you can make a search like this:
@using Skybrud.Social.Instagram.Models.Users
@using Skybrud.Social.Instagram.Responses.Users
@inherits WebViewPage<Skybrud.Social.Instagram.InstagramService>
@{
const string username = "abjerner";
InstagramSearchUsersResponse response = Model.Users.Search(username);
InstagramUserSummary user = response.Body.Data.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Username == username);
}
From what I can tell, Instagram will always return usernames as lowercase, so you should specify username parameter as lowercase as well (or make a check that isn't case-sensitive).
