Examples of creating collection items programatically

Hi all,

I have a requirement to integrate with the instagram API via a schedule task that needs to take the information and transform it into a collection item that exists on the site. i found this post that outlines something i could potentially do.

https://forum.grabaperch.com/forum/03-05-2015-creating-collection-items-programmatically

Not sure if there is now a public API to do this sort of thing, but if not is there any examples on how the data should be passed into the, i am not sure how to structure the data part of the input (the portion that would populate the itemJSON column in the collection_items table in the database) specifically:

• is it just a PHP array that matches the json items that are already in the database?
• how can you deal with the markdown field programatically as the value has the structure

"body":{"_flang":"markdown","raw":"Content","processed":"<p>Content\/p>"}

Any input would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks,

Rob