CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptjqueryinstagram
cbender
cbender

Reputation: 2251

The comments I am retrieving when using the Instagram API are returning 'undefined'

I'm retrieving data from

https://api.instagram.com/v1/tags/HASHTAG/media/recent?client_id=CLIENT_ID


where
HASHTAG = the hashtag I'm searching
CLIENT_ID = my client id
I am having no trouble retrieving the picture urls and captions but when I try to get the comments the comments are being returned as 'undefined'.
The data is stored in an array called pictures so if I want to get the standard resolution url I just do:

for(i = 0; i < pictures.length; i++){
  pictureURL[i] = pictures[i].images.standard_resolution.url;
}

Right now the code I'm trying to use to retrieve the comments is :

//where 'i' is the index of the pic I'm currently focusing on
for (comment in pictures[i].comments.data) {
            alert(comment.text);
            //using alert just to see what is being retrieved
        }

But the issue is that the alerts are only displaying 'undefined' and also they are only displaying undefined when there is a comment (I checked on my phone, if the pic has no comment, there is no alert. If the picture has comments there is 1 alert for each comment.
Can someone please help me out?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 292

Answers (1)

apsillers
apsillers

Reputation: 115920

The value in pictures[i].comments.data is an array, as shown in the "Response" section in the /tags/tag-name/media/recent Instagram API docs:

[{
    "type": "image",
    ...
    "comments": {
        "data": [{
            "created_time": "1296703540",
            "text": "Snow",
            ...
        },
        {
            "created_time": "1296707889",
            "text": "#snow",
            ...
        }],
    ...

As you can see, the data property in the comments object is an array (beginning with [).

You're misusing for..in on an array. (See Why is using "for...in" with array iteration a bad idea?) for..in loops over property names of objects. The value of comment will always be a property name string, which certainly has no text property.

Instead, you need a plain for loop, because pictures[i].comments.data is an array:

for (var j=0; j<pictures[i].comments.data.length; j++) {
    var comment = pictures[i].comments.data[j];
    alert(comment.text)
}

One important note is that even if pictures[i].comments.data had been a non-array object, your use of for..in still wouldn't be quite right. Your variable comment holds property names, and you need to use property-access to get the value that a property name refers to:

for (commentKey in pictures[i].comments.data) {
    var commentValue = pictures[i].comments.data[commentKey];
    alert(commentValue.text)
}

Note that this might work for arrays, but:

  1. The property names may not loop in numerical order
  2. This will loop over all iterable properies of the array, not just numeric indices

Upvotes: 1

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