Question

I feel like I’m overthinking this. What I want to do is pull the most recent photos from the instagram api and save the resulting json information as a cache file. I’ll then use jQuery to read from that file — I’ve got that part figured out. What I’m using now is saving it in a cache file, but not in a format that I recognize. I think I’m overcomplicating this.

This is code I’ve been working with based on a tutorial I found:

// Client ID for Instagram API
$instagramClientID = '9110e8c268384cb79901a96e3a16f588';

$api = 'https://api.instagram.com/v1/media/popular?client_id='.$instagramClientID; //api       request (edit this to reflect tags)
$cache = 'cache.txt';

if(file_exists($cache) && filemtime($cache) > time() - 60*60){
// If a cache file exists, and it is newer than 1 hour, use it
$images = unserialize(file_get_contents($cache));
}
else{
// Make an API request and create the cache file

// For example, gets the 32 most popular images on Instagram

$response = file_get_contents($api); //change request path to pull different photos

$images = array();

// Decode the response and build an array
foreach(json_decode($response)->data as $item){ // Decodes json (javascript) into an array

    $title = '';

    if($item->caption){
        $title = mb_substr($item->caption->text,0,70,"utf8");
    }

    $src = $item->images->standard_resolution->url; //Caches standard res img path to variable $src

    $lat = $item->data->location->latitude; // Caches latitude as $lat
    $lon = $item->data->location->longtitude; // Caches longitude as $lon       

    $images[] = array(
        "title" => htmlspecialchars($title),
        "src" => htmlspecialchars($src),
        "lat" => htmlspecialchars($lat),
        "lon" => htmlspecialchars($lon) // Consolidates variables to an array
    );
}

// Remove the last item, so we still have
// 32 items when when the cover is added
//array_pop($images);

// Push the cover in the beginning of the array
//array_unshift($images,array("title"=>"Cover", "src"=>"assets/img/cover.jpg"));

// Update the cache file
file_put_contents($cache,serialize($images));
}

Answer 1

One thing I noticed is the API is mega slow, good choice to cache.

You are attempting to save as a serialized array (which is no biggie) but you may as well save it as json if your going to read it as json again, it saves 1 step in unserializing it again.

Here are some changes I made:
Added curl to try and speed up the response or fall back to FGC if u dont have it installed.
The response gets saved as json, and when retrieved from the cache its decoded as an array instead of an object, this means you can keep your same array structure.

$item->data->location->latitude and $item->data->location->longtitude is always null in the result so added a check for that…

Hope it helps

<?php
// Client ID for Instagram API
$instagramClientID = '9110e8c268384cb79901a96e3a16f588';

$api = 'https://api.instagram.com/v1/media/popular?client_id='.$instagramClientID; //api request (edit this to reflect tags)
$cache = './cache.json';

if(file_exists($cache) && filemtime($cache) > time() - 60*60){
    // If a cache file exists, and it is newer than 1 hour, use it
    $images = json_decode(file_get_contents($cache),true); //Decode as an json array
}
else{
    // Make an API request and create the cache file
    // For example, gets the 32 most popular images on Instagram
    $response = get_curl($api); //change request path to pull different photos

    $images = array();

    if($response){
        // Decode the response and build an array
        foreach(json_decode($response)->data as $item){

            $title = (isset($item->caption))?mb_substr($item->caption->text,0,70,"utf8"):null;

            $src = $item->images->standard_resolution->url; //Caches standard res img path to variable $src

            //Location coords seemed empty in the results but you would need to check them as mostly be undefined
            $lat = (isset($item->data->location->latitude))?$item->data->location->latitude:null; // Caches latitude as $lat
            $lon = (isset($item->data->location->longtitude))?$item->data->location->longtitude:null; // Caches longitude as $lon

            $images[] = array(
            "title" => htmlspecialchars($title),
            "src" => htmlspecialchars($src),
            "lat" => htmlspecialchars($lat),
            "lon" => htmlspecialchars($lon) // Consolidates variables to an array
            );
        }
        file_put_contents($cache,json_encode($images)); //Save as json
    }
}

//Debug out
print_r($images);

//Added curl for faster response
function get_curl($url){
    if(function_exists('curl_init')){
        $ch = curl_init();
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
        curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0);
        curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0); 
        $output = curl_exec($ch);
        echo curl_error($ch);
        curl_close($ch);
        return $output;
    }else{
        return file_get_contents($url);
    }

}

?>