Setup Webhooks Subscriptions

This document shows you how to subscribe webhook fields for an Instagram professional account using your app. This allows you to receive real-time notifications whenever someone comments on the Media objects of the Instagram professional account using your app or when a Instagram user sends a message to that Instagram professional account.

Requirements

You will need:

Access level

Advanced Access if your app serves Instagram professional accounts you don't own or manage
Standard Access if your app serves Instagram professional accounts you own or manage

Access tokens

An Instagram User access token requested from a Instagram user who can manage comments on the Instagram professional account

App Dashboard

Your app must be subscribed to Instagram webhooks
Your app must be set to Live mode for Meta to send webhook notifications.

Base URL

All endpoints can be accessed via the graph.instagram.com host

Endpoints

/<YOUR_APP_USERS_IG_USER_ID> or /me

IDs

The ID for the Instagram professional account (<YOUR_APP_USERS_IG_USER_ID>) that is using your app

NOTE: The owner of the Instagram media upon which the comment or @mention appears must not have set their account to private

Permissions

instagram_business_basic – Required for all webhook fields
See the Instagram fields table in this guide for specific permissions for each field

Webhooks server

A server on which you can create an endpoint that accepts and processes the webhooks notifications

Limitations

Webhook customization for Instagram business level webhooks isn't supported. Webhook notifications are sent for the webhook fields your app is subscribed to if your app user is subscribed to at least one Instagram webhook field.

Create an Endpoint

Your endpoint must be able to process two types of HTTPS requests: Verification Requests and Event Notifications. Since both requests use HTTPs, your server must have a valid TLS or SSL certificate correctly configured and installed. Self-signed certificates are not supported.

The sections below explain what will be in each type of request and how to respond to them. Alternatively, you can use our sample app which is already configured to process these requests.

Verification Requests

Anytime you configure the Webhooks product in your App Dashboard, we'll send a GET request to your endpoint URL. Verification requests include the following query string parameters, appended to the end of your endpoint URL. They will look something like this:

Sample Verification Request

GET https://www.your-clever-domain-name.com/webhooks?
  hub.mode=subscribe&
  hub.challenge=1158201444&
  hub.verify_token=meatyhamhock

Parameter	Sample Value	Description
`hub.mode`	`subscribe`	This value will always be set to `subscribe`.
`hub.challenge`	`1158201444`	An `int` you must pass back to us.
`hub.verify_token`	`meatyhamhock`	A string that that we grab from the Verify Token field in your app's App Dashboard. You will set this string when you complete the Webhooks configuration settings steps.

Note: PHP converts periods (.) to underscores (_) in parameter names.

Validating Verification Requests

Whenever your endpoint receives a verification request, it must:

Verify that the hub.verify_token value matches the string you set in the Verify Token field when you configure the Webhooks product in your App Dashboard (you haven't set up this token string yet).
Respond with the hub.challenge value.

If you are in your App Dashboard and configuring your Webhooks product (and thus, triggering a Verification Request), the dashboard will indicate if your endpoint validated the request correctly. If you are using the Graph API's /app/subscriptions endpoint to configure the Webhooks product, the API will indicate success or failure with a response.

Event Notifications

When you configure your Webhooks product, you will subscribe to specific fields on an object type (e.g., the photos field on the user object). Whenever there's a change to one of these fields, we will send your endpoint a POST request with a JSON payload describing the change.

For example, if you subscribed to the user object's photos field and one of your app's Users posted a Photo, we would send you a POST request that would look something like this:

POST / HTTPS/1.1
Host: your-clever-domain-name.com/webhooks
Content-Type: application/json
X-Hub-Signature-256: sha256={super-long-SHA256-signature}
Content-Length: 311

{
  "entry": [
    {
      "time": 1520383571,
      "changes": [
        {
          "field": "photos",
          "value":
            {
              "verb": "update",
              "object_id": "10211885744794461"
            }
        }
      ],
      "id": "10210299214172187",
      "uid": "10210299214172187"
    }
  ],
  "object": "user"
}

Payload Contents

Payloads will contain an object describing the change. When you configure the webhooks product, you can indicate if payloads should only contain the names of changed fields, or if payloads should include the new values as well.

We format all payloads with JSON, so you can parse the payload using common JSON parsing methods or packages.

We do not store any Webhook event notification data that we send you, so be sure to capture and store any payload content that you want to keep.

Most payloads will contain the following common properties, but the contents and structure of each payload varies depending on the object fields you are subscribed to. Refer to each object's reference document to see which fields will be included.

Property	Description	Type
`object`	The object's type (e.g., `user`, `page`, etc.)	`string`
`entry`	An array containing an object describing the changes. Multiple changes from different objects that are of the same type may be batched together.	`array`
`id`	The object's ID	`string`
`changed_fields`	An array of strings indicating the names of the fields that have been changed. Only included if you disable the Include Values setting when configuring the Webhooks product in your app's App Dashboard.	`array`
`changes`	An array containing an object describing the changed fields and their new values. Only included if you enable the Include Values setting when configuring the Webhooks product in your app's App Dashboard.	`array`
`time`	A UNIX timestamp indicating when the Event Notification was sent (not when the change that triggered the notification occurred).	`int`

Validating Payloads

We sign all Event Notification payloads with a SHA256 signature and include the signature in the request's X-Hub-Signature-256 header, preceded with sha256=. You don't have to validate the payload, but you should.

To validate the payload:

Generate a SHA256 signature using the payload and your app's App Secret.
Compare your signature to the signature in the X-Hub-Signature-256 header (everything after sha256=). If the signatures match, the payload is genuine.

Responding to Event Notifications

Your endpoint should respond to all Event Notifications with 200 OK HTTPS.

Frequency

Event Notifications are aggregated and sent in a batch with a maximum of 1000 updates. However batching cannot be guaranteed so be sure to adjust your servers to handle each Webhook individually.

If any update sent to your server fails, we will retry immediately, then try a few more times with decreasing frequency over the next 36 hours. Your server should handle deduplication in these cases. Unacknowledged responses will be dropped after 36 hours.

Note: The frequency with which Messenger event notifications are sent is different. Please refer to the Messenger Platform Webhooks documentation for more information.

Subscribe to webhooks

To subscribe your app user to Instagram webhook fields so they can receive Instagram event notifications, send a POST request to the /<YOUR_APP_USERS_IG_USER_ID>/subscribed_apps endpoint with the subscribed_fields parameter set to a comma-separated list of webhooks fields.

Request Syntax

Formatted for readability.

POST /<YOUR_APP_USERS_IG_USER_ID>/subscribed_apps
  ?subscribed_fields=<LIST_OF_WEBHOOK_FIELDS>
  &<ACCESS_TOKEN>

Request Parameters

Value Placeholder	Value Description
`<YOUR_APP_USERS_IG_USER_ID>`	The app user's Instagram professional account ID
`<ACCESS_TOKEN>`	App user's Instagram User access token.
`<LIST_OF_WEBHOOK_FIELDS>`	A comma-separated list of Instagram webhook fields

Example Request