PYINSTAMATION

Easy to use, config oriented, instagram bot, written in python 3

PYINSTAMATION

Features

Upload pictures
Farm followers with the follow/unfollow technique
Like and comment by tags
Metrics persisted in db
Logging
Comment generator
Dockerization
Auto update user's description

Quickstart

Check pyvirtualdisplay is installed properly
Create virtualenv
Run:

make init
# set username and password in `config.yaml` and configure at will
make run-bot

API Example

If you want to check how to use the bot in depth check the examples or read the source.

To run the examples just type, but remember to update the constants (user, pass, post url):

python examples/bot_like_and_comment.py

python examples/bot_upload_picture.py

Simple example

from pyinstamation.bot import InstaBot
from pyinstamation.scrapper import InstaScrapper


POST_LINK = 'p/not_a_real_post_id'
USERNAME = 'replace_this_with_your_username'
PASSWORD = 'replace_this_with_your_password'

s = InstaScrapper()
bot = InstaBot(s, username=USERNAME, password=PASSWORD)

bot.start_browser()
bot.login()
bot.like(POST_LINK)
bot.comment(POST_LINK, 'this is a simple comment')
bot.stop()

Prerequisites

OS

Linux (Tested in debian)
OS X

SO Packages

Linux

sudo apt-get install xvfb xserver-xephyr

Python versions

python >3.5
python >2.7  (not supported officially)

Remember to create a virtualenv

Commands

Command	Description
`make init`	downloads webdriver and creates a new conf based on the default one
`make run-bot`	starts running the bot (remember to at least set the username and password)
`make install-deps`	installs python dependencies
`make start-conf`	creates a new configuration file with the template from `default.config.yaml`
`make webdriver`	downloads selenium's webdriver

Configuration

Create a config.yaml and tune it at will, or use make init. The options are divided in different sections.

Option	Type	Description	Default
`username` *	str	instagram username to operate. Only username works with statistics, not email	---
`password` **	str	username's password	---
`hide_browser`	bool	do not display the browser	False
`browser_type`	str	browser type (chrome/firefox)	chrome

* Required

** Required unless the bot is launched with -p [PASSWORD]

Posts

Option	Type	Description	Default
`search_tags`	str	comma separated tags to search for	[]
`ignore_tags`	str	comma separated tags to ignore if a post contains them while searching	[]
`posts_per_day`	int	number of posts to be processed in total, ignored does not count
`posts_per_hashtag`	int	number of posts to be processed per hashtag (not recommended)
`likes_per_day`	int	maximum likes given in a day	100
`like_probability`	float	probability to give a like	0.5
`comments_per_day`	int	maximum comments given in a day	10
`comment_probability`	float	probability to comment	0.5
`comment_enabled`	bool	bot will comment in the searched posts	True
`comment_generator`	bool	bot will generate a random generic comment	True
`custom_comments`	array	in case you don't want random comments, you can provide them	[]

Followers

Option	Type	Description	Default
`follow_enable`	bool	while searching the bot will also follow people	True
`min_followers`	None or int	minimum number followers that a user must have to follow. Lower bound	100
`max_followers`	None or int	will follow users with less than this amount of followers. Upper bound	7000
`follow_probability`	float	chance to follow someone while searching, between 0 and 1	0.5
`ignore_users`	array	users not to follow	[]
`follow_per_day`	int	max number of users to follow	50
`unfollow_followed_users`	bool	after a few days the bot will stop following the users followed	True

Pics

Option	Type	Description	Default
`upload`	bool	when enabled attempts to upload a picture if there is one to upload	False
`files`	collection	the contents of the files to upload are below	[]

Pics > files

Option	Type	Description	Default
`path` *	str	absolute path to the file location.
`datetime`	str	format ISO 8061: `%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S` eg: `2017-08-18T18:00:00`. For now, time is ignored, but the idea is to take it into account	None
`comment`	str	comment to be added when the pic is posted	None

* Required

For config template check default.config.yaml

We told you it was easy.

Running periodically

Use Crontab Use Celery and Celery Beat (with supervisord)

Troubleshooting

If you have an error similar to FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'Xephyr' or WebDriverException: The browser appears to have exited before we could connect?
try installing the missing dependency sudo apt-get install xvfb xserver-xephyr.
For more information check pyvirtualdisplay docs
If you have an error similar to OSError: [Errno 8] Exec format error try downloading manually
the chromedriver from here
For Raspberry Pi you need a special chromedriver, check here
or here