CODEWITHSUNDEEP
instagraminstagram-api
Muhammad Faisal Iqbal
Muhammad Faisal Iqbal

Reputation: 1836

Instagram Access Token Fails after some time

I made An app (which is Live now and) it Uses Instagram API.

It uses one access token per hour. (which is far away from limit 5000/hour)

But What I see that say if 25 users gave access to me than each day 2 to 4 user's access token become invalid (seems randomly).

But Instagram says that:

Even though our access tokens do not specify an expiration time, your app should handle the case that either the user revokes access, or Instagram expires the token after some period of time. If the token is no longer valid, API responses will contain an “error_type=OAuthAccessTokenException”. In this case you will need to re-authenticate the user to obtain a new valid token. In other words: do not assume your access_token is valid forever.

I confirmed that none of these "Revoked Access".

Is there any reason that why its happening.

Or any platform where I can contact Instagram and ask the reason. So that I can avoid it. (if I 'm doing something wrong)

Upvotes: 1

Views: 486

Answers (1)

solumos
solumos

Reputation: 11

Unfortunately, the tokens have a tendency to (seemingly) randomly expire. I think the reason is that Instagram doesn't want a single token to grant full access to a user's content without expiration.

Instagram expires the token after some period of time

I would recommend having the user re-auth through Instagram to get a fresh token, as they suggest, and making sure that you are able to handle that OAuth exception when it happens.

In this case you will need to re-authenticate the user to obtain a new valid token.

do not assume your access_token is valid forever.

Also, since the permissions update on 2016-06-01, Instagram has been somewhat hostile and generally unhelpful toward 3rd party apps, so it's not really worth contacting them.

Upvotes: 1

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