Franz: Instagram Direct integration

[ghost]

Instagram Direct integration

Hello,

I would like to suggest to add Instagram Direct on Franz, an option that it is important for a lot of franz users.

Best regards,
Pablo K.

(Franz is awesome!!)

[closingin]

Hello, from https://meetfranz.com/support, you can find this Google Form for service requests.

[raynesio]

Hey both @akspablo @closingin did you manage to get the current instagram plugin for Franz to work in V5?

[closingin]

@raynesio I never heard of an Instagram plugin and I wouldn't use it anyway, that's totally unrelated to messaging. And as I said, I think that service requests don't belong here.

If you're looking for an Instagram wrapper you can find one here, but I don't understand why it should be added to Franz imo.

[GevaZeichner]

@closingin Because IG has DMs in it. People IM each other there. There's a macOS app called IGdm, but it would be nice to have that functionality in Franz.

[closingin]

@GevaZeichner There's nothing on Instagram's website that allows you to use the DM feature that exists on their mobile app. So this wouldn't fit.

And anyway, new services have to be requested on the link I sent above.

@haraldox This issue can be closed.

[GevaZeichner]

It's not on their website. It's on a 3rd party macOS desktop app: http://igdm.me/
Requested in the link too. But wanted to answer your open questions here.

[closingin]

@GevaZeichner But IG:dm is a software, not a web page (as far as I searched) ? Franz works by loading web pages so that wouldn't be possible.

Even if this software provided a web app, it would require you to install it on your desktop, which would mean the service wouldn't work without it. Bad user experience.

[heisenberg617]

The IG:dm project is open source, is it possible we could ascertain how they were able to get direct messaging working and somehow make that work? I understand that franz basically loads a website, so I would guess someone would have to create a website that hosts the necessary code for instagram dm and such. There is no way to put a web app into a franz recipe directly is there?

https://github.com/ifedapoolarewaju/igdm

[heisenberg617]

I ended up looking around for websites that offer instagram direct messaging. I found postgrain.com which has a free tier. Only caveat is your account has to have 50 followers and 5 media posts. I am not there yet so I can't check their interface. I would surmise it could be integrated with franz.

[heisenberg617]

okay, got it to work, but looks like direct messaging is not part of the free tier

[dstanley83]

Following up on this - anyone tried to integrate IG:dm project into franz?

[closingin]

Hello @dstanley83 ! IG:dm doesn't provide a web interface (it's an electron application), so it's currently not possible to integrate it in Franz.

[onarbf]

Then let's dev a web interface for IG:DM! haha

[Ricki-BumbleDev]

Since IGDM is an electron app it already is a web interface, we'd just need someone to host it somewhere publicly, which, however, probably is against Instagram's terms of service...

[zulumbazoid]

Did anyone got this to work in the meantime?

[realdannys]

I'd be really interested in this - perhaps someone could work out how to do it and then we can host it our selves for our private use? It's the only messaging service I use that I don't have access to on my Mac.

[closingin]

Hello @zulumbazoid and @realdannys , if you want to discuss about a feature that is related to IG:dm and not Franz, please don't do it in this repository's issues.

If you want IG:dm to work in Franz, you need this software to expose either a web app or a web server that Franz can use (web server because there's a new premium feature in Franz that allows you to add your own custom recipes directly). Otherwise it's not possible, maybe you can ask them or search for an existing issue in their repository.

[elvisbrens]

Hello,

I just found this: https://github.com/alexdevero/franz-instagram-recipe

Seems to work under the recipe/dev folder
I'm new to this. Is this safe to add?

[realdannys]

@elvisbrens that’s not Instagram DM, it’s just the Insta web interface.

[elvisbrens]

@realdannys It also has DM. When you add the service and login, look for the DM icon in the top-right corner.

[realdannys]

@realdannys It also has DM. When you add the service and login, look for the DM icon in the top-right corner.

Ah yes sorry you're right - it appears to load the mobile view of the website. Not sure it's that much use though as you won't get any of the messaging features of Franz...notifications etc, it's basically just like loading up the mobile version of Insta in your browser. It's something I guess.

[MurzNN]

Instagram Direct chat already works in web version at url https://www.instagram.com/direct/inbox/ if we use user-agent from any mobile browser, eg Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.0.4; Galaxy Nexus Build/IMM76B) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.133 Mobile Safari/535.19

So we can easily add Instagram Direct chat, if override user-agent string!

[realdannys]

Instagram Direct chat already works in web version at url https://www.instagram.com/direct/inbox/ if we use user-agent from any mobile browser, eg Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.0.4; Galaxy Nexus Build/IMM76B) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.133 Mobile Safari/535.19

So we can easily add Instagram Direct chat, if override user-agent string!

Perhaps this is the answer - the plugin above seems to access this menu but also the rest of Instagram and defaults to the homepage - it of course just acts as web browser window so you get no notifications, no symbols it has no interface with the chat - so i'm not sure if someone can build upon the mobile link to actually work with Franz features or not.

[bvrulez]

@realdannys It also has DM. When you add the service and login, look for the DM icon in the top-right corner.

Ah yes sorry you're right - it appears to load the mobile view of the website. Not sure it's that much use though as you won't get any of the messaging features of Franz...notifications etc, it's basically just like loading up the mobile version of Insta in your browser. It's something I guess.

I just wanted to add that an instagram chat would be nice even without any notification. Just to be able to use keyboards.

[leolelego]

You can do it yourself!

1) add a Custom Website service, and use the normal instagram.com url (add name, logo etc)
2) open the service and login to instagram
3) kill Franz
4) open ~/Library/Application/ Support/Ferdi/recipes/franz-custom-website/index.js with a code editor (On Mac, will be different on Windows)
4) make it looks like this

"use strict";

module.exports = Franz => class CustomWebsite extends Franz {
  overrideUserAgent() {
    return "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 10_3_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/603.1.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.0 Mobile/14E304 Safari/602.1";
}
  async validateUrl(url) {
     return true
  }
};

5) open Franz and change the URL of your service to https://www.instagram.com/direct/inbox (you cannot do it before editing the index.js)

6) close Franz
7) (optional) replace the validateUrl method in the index.js by this one

  async validateUrl(url) {
    try {
      const resp = await window.fetch(url, {
        method: 'GET',
        headers: {
          'Content-Type': 'application/json'
        }
      });
      return resp.status.toString().startsWith('2') || resp.status.toString().startsWith('3');
    } catch (err) {
      console.error(err);
    }

    return false;
  }

Should work!

[realdannys]

Well this is interesting - maybe we can get proper support now?

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/01/14/instagram-dms-coming-to-web/