Continuous pushes to subscription endpoint with same data

[A.B]

We've experienced a high number of repeat requests for a single user today that's causing us to hit the rate limit for that user. Our logs are showing posts from Fitbit to our subscription endpoint 1 - 2 times per minute every minute for the last ~4 hours with update notifications for the same user. Each request contains the same 4 dates to update in the range of 2016-01-13 to 2016-01-17. 

When we GET the activity endpoint for the user there doesn't appear to be any updated data there.

GET: https://api.fitbit.com/1/user/-/activities/date/2016-01-14.json

Can you provide any insight into what might be going on here? 

 The request body looks like this:

[ { collectionType: 'activities',
date: '2016-01-14',
ownerId: '<owner-id>',
ownerType: 'user',
subscriptionId: '<subscription-id>' },
{ collectionType: 'activities',
date: '2016-01-17',
ownerId: '<owner-id>',
ownerType: 'user',
subscriptionId: '<subscription-id>' },
{ collectionType: 'activities',
date: '2016-01-13',
ownerId: '<owner-id>',
ownerType: 'user',
subscriptionId: '<subscription-id>' },
{ collectionType: 'activities',
date: '2016-01-15',
ownerId: '<owner-id>',
ownerType: 'user',
subscriptionId: '<subscription-id>' } ]

[JeremiahFitbit]

Have you check to see if this user is genuinely adding manual activity log entries on those days?

Sometimes people use third-party data import apps into Fitbit that backfill their data from other sources.

[A.B]

No manual entry activities were ever returned as part of the user's summary data. The subscription updates (now finally stopped) were sent every minute or more (until the rate limit was hit) for ~7 hours in total which doesn't seem like normal update behavior. The updates were always for the same 4 dates as well. 

The only data I can see changing are the tracker distances data. For example, here are 3 responses from the /user/-/activities/date/2016-01-14.json endpoint a few hours apart. Notice how tracker distance goes from 4.64 to 10.29 and then back to 4.64.

4 May 2016 10:21:16
{"activities":[],"goals":{"activeMinutes":30,"caloriesOut":2855,"distance":8.05,"floors":10,"steps":10000},"summary":{"activeScore":-1,"activityCalories":1134,"caloriesBMR":1927,"caloriesOut":2798,"distances":[{"activity":"total","distance":4.64},{"activity":"tracker","distance":4.64},{"activity":"loggedActivities","distance":0},{"activity":"veryActive","distance":0},{"activity":"moderatelyActive","distance":0},{"activity":"lightlyActive","distance":4.64},{"activity":"sedentaryActive","distance":0}],"elevation":42.67,"fairlyActiveMinutes":0,"floors":14,"lightlyActiveMinutes":255,"marginalCalories":578,"sedentaryMinutes":1185,"steps":6700,"veryActiveMinutes":0}}

4 May 2016 12:20:07
{"activities":[],"goals":{"activeMinutes":30,"caloriesOut":2673,"distance":8.05,"floors":10,"steps":10000},"summary":{"activeScore":-1,"activityCalories":1030,"caloriesBMR":879,"caloriesOut":1745,"distances":[{"activity":"total","distance":10.29},{"activity":"tracker","distance":10.29},{"activity":"loggedActivities","distance":0},{"activity":"veryActive","distance":7.05},{"activity":"moderatelyActive","distance":0.24},{"activity":"lightlyActive","distance":2.99},{"activity":"sedentaryActive","distance":0}],"elevation":118.87,"fairlyActiveMinutes":3,"floors":39,"lightlyActiveMinutes":123,"marginalCalories":692,"sedentaryMinutes":140,"steps":11922,"veryActiveMinutes":55}}

4 May 2016 13:16:45
{"activities":[],"goals":{"activeMinutes":30,"caloriesOut":2855,"distance":8.05,"floors":10,"steps":10000},"summary":{"activeScore":-1,"activityCalories":1134,"caloriesBMR":1927,"caloriesOut":2798,"distances":[{"activity":"total","distance":4.64},{"activity":"tracker","distance":4.64},{"activity":"loggedActivities","distance":0},{"activity":"veryActive","distance":0},{"activity":"moderatelyActive","distance":0},{"activity":"lightlyActive","distance":4.64},{"activity":"sedentaryActive","distance":0}],"elevation":42.67,"fairlyActiveMinutes":0,"floors":14,"lightlyActiveMinutes":255,"marginalCalories":578,"sedentaryMinutes":1185,"steps":6700,"veryActiveMinutes":0}}

Some sort of sync loop maybe?

[JeremiahFitbit]

Please send your client id and the user id to us privately to investigate more.

[JeremiahFitbit · Accepted solution]

I responded to your private support ticket.

For anyone else interested, this was caused by a device not properly syncing.

[A.B]

Thanks Jeremiah. We'll add some additional logic on our end to deal with the situation. 

For anyone else that finds this thread, a few takeaways: 

• Noisy or malfunctioning devices may cause erratic updates that will be passed along to the subscription endpoint and need to be limited at the application level. 
• Update notifications to subscription endpoints may exceed the 150 req/user/hr rate limit if you make a GET request for that user as a response each time. The limit applies to your app but Fitbit may notify of updates more frequently than that.