opossum

OpossumInstagramPublisher

A Ruby gem for publishing media to Instagram using Instagram Basic Display API and Instagram Graph API. This gem provides a simple interface to authenticate users via Instagram Login and publish images, videos, and carousel posts to their Instagram accounts.

Prerequisites

Before using this gem, you need to:

• Create a Facebook App and configure Instagram Basic Display API
• Set up Instagram Basic Display API permissions
• Configure OAuth redirect URIs in your Facebook App settings
• Obtain your Instagram Business Account ID

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'opossum'

And then execute:

bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

gem install oposum

Usage

This gem provides three independent classes for working with Instagram API:

Authentication

require 'opossum'

# Create authenticator
authenticator = Opossum::Authenticator.new(
  client_id: 'your_instagram_app_id',
  client_secret: 'your_instagram_app_secret',
  redirect_uri: 'your_redirect_uri'
)

# Get user info and long-lived token from authorization code
result = authenticator.get_user_info_from_code(
  authorization_code,
  fields: 'id,user_id'
)
# Returns: 
# { 
#   access_token: {
#     access_token: "ACCESS_TOKEN",
#     token_type: "TOKEN_TYPE",
#     expires_in: 5183742
#   },
#   user_details: {
#     id: "IG_ID",
#     user_id: "IG_USER_ID"
#   }
# }

# Or get only long-lived token without user details
result = authenticator.get_user_info_from_code(authorization_code)
# Returns:
# { 
#   access_token: {
#     access_token: "ACCESS_TOKEN",
#     token_type: "TOKEN_TYPE",
#     expires_in: 5183742
#   }
# }

User Details (Optional)

# If you need to refresh an existing access token
user_details = Opossum::UserDetails.new(
  access_token: existing_access_token
)

# Refresh access token (extends for another 60 days)
refreshed_token = user_details.refresh_access_token

Publishing

# Create publisher with access token and Instagram business account ID
publisher = Opossum::Publisher.new(
  access_token: access_token,
  ig_id: instagram_business_account_id
)

# Publish single image
result = publisher.publish_media(
  media_url: 'https://example.com/image.jpg',
  media_type: 'IMAGE'
)

# Publish image with caption
result = publisher.publish_media(
  media_url: 'https://example.com/image.jpg',
  media_type: 'IMAGE',
  caption: 'Beautiful sunset! 🌅 #nature #photography'
)

# Publish carousel with caption
result = publisher.publish_media(
  media_url: [
    'https://example.com/image1.jpg',
    'https://example.com/image2.jpg'
  ],
  media_type: 'CAROUSEL',
  caption: 'Photo collection from my trip ✈️ #travel #memories'
)

# That's it! publish_media handles everything automatically:
# - Creates media container(s)
# - Waits for processing to complete  
# - Publishes the media

Error Handling

The gem includes comprehensive error handling for API responses with enhanced Instagram API error detection:

begin
  publisher = Opossum::Publisher.new(
    access_token: access_token,
    ig_id: instagram_business_account_id
  )
  
  result = publisher.publish_media(
    media_url: 'https://example.com/image.jpg'
  )
rescue Opossum::Error => e
  puts "Error: #{e.message}"
  # Examples of error messages:
  # "HTTP Error: Connection failed"
  # "JSON Parse Error: Unexpected token"
  # "Instagram API Error: Invalid media URL"
end

Error Handling Features:

• HTTP Error Detection - Catches network and connection issues with descriptive messages
• JSON Parsing - Handles malformed API responses with clear error descriptions
• Instagram API Errors - Automatically detects and reports Instagram-specific errors via error_message field
• Error Chain Processing - Processes errors in logical order: HTTP → JSON → Instagram API

Supported Media Types

• IMAGE - Single images (JPEG, PNG) with optional caption
• VIDEO - Single videos (MP4, MOV) with optional caption
• REELS - Instagram Reels with optional caption
• STORIES - Instagram Stories with optional caption
• CAROUSEL - Multiple images in a single post with optional caption (automatically handled when passing an array of URLs)

Features:

• Captions - Add text descriptions, hashtags, and mentions to your posts
• Token Management - Get long-lived tokens and refresh existing tokens

Note: Currently, carousel posts support only images. Support for mixed media types (images + videos) in carousels will be added in future versions.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and the created tag, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/ninjarender/opossum. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the code of conduct.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting in the OpossumInstagramPublisher project's codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.