Is there an easy or definite way to get a user’s follower count with just their vine url?

The only way that I can find to do this is by
-> searching for the user with the username with https://api.vineapp.com/users/search/
-> going to the first result (which doesn’t seem like a reliable thing to do) and pulling the user id
-> using the user id to get the follow count via https://api.vineapp.com/users/profiles

I’m using php, is there a smart / easy way of doing this?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Shane Daugherty