Log entries before 2009 bug

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On March 15 I reported an internal server error (HTTP code 500). When I wrote to find out why I hadn't heard from Fitbit after a while, I got a reply from "Erik V and the Fitbit team" saying "... you will be contacted soon by [the technical support] department." After another wait, I wrote back and asked "Can you tell me what 'soon' means in this context?" and immediately got a reply from "Czarina Jean and the Fitbit team" saying "We deeply apologize ..." and asking me to confirm when I got contacted. I wrote back and said I'm still waiting, and I haven't heard anything from Fitbit since. The custom support case number is 04513589. How much longer do you think I'll need to wait?

As a related issue, it's puzzling that the API let me store data prior to 2009 (I have daily weight statistics going back to 2003), but won't let me retrieve my own data (the series retrieval API complains that dates earlier than 2009 are invalid).

Thanks,

Muzhik Bob

[JeremiahFitbit]

Sounds like you contacted customer support instead of API support. Sorry for the delay.

The Fitbit epoch begins on January 1, 2009. The API doesn't expect data before that point. It's a known limitation that may be addressed in the future, but it's not a common use case.

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Well, the API may not expect it (though I haven't seen any documentation to that effect), but it stores it and I can retrieve it, just not with a date range. Let's hope you're right about a future solution.

However, that problem was a "by the way" footnote to the original problem report, which involved storing data well after 2009. Let's not get distracted by that side issue. As for the theory that I wrote to the wrong support group: is api@fitbit.com, to which I sent the original report, not the correct address? My first responses were from noreply@fitbit.com, followed by a reponse from fitbit-support@fitbit.com (which tempts me to think that it really didn't make any difference which group I sent the original report to). That respose said "We have forwarded the complete code to our API Team ...." What more do I need to do to make sure the report gets to the right team. Does it really have to be this hard?

[JeremiahFitbit]

The primary support method for the Web API is right here. api@fitbit.com should only be used if you have a confidential matter. I've asked the team to find your case.

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I wrote to the email address the API documentation told me to use.

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Jeremiah:

Did you change the title of this thread? If so, could you please restore it to the original title I gave it? Your new title promotes the confusion anyone will fall into if he gets distracted by the footnote issue. The problem with not being able to query pre-2009 data using date ranges is a secondary problem. The primary problem has nothing to do with pre-2009 data.

Thanks,

Bob

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I just heard from the API team. They fixed the problem and I have confirmed the fix.

Let's hope it doesn't take five months to get a resolution for any future issues. 🙂

Thanks,

Bob

[JeremiahFitbit]

The issue did not take 5 months to resolve. Your support case did, for which I apologize. Most cases are resolved within a few business days.

A 500 response code from a request that typically succeeds means that the Fitbit API was having an intermitant issue. When this happens, you should try your request again. If there is an extended outage (more than a few minutes), it will be documented at http://status.fitbit.com .

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Hi, Jeremiah. My last response to the thread about the 5-month-old issue failed posting, so I'm responding here.

Trust me, I tried that transaction for weeks in a cron job that ran every hour. It wasn't an intermittent failure, and it wasn't documented at http://status.fitbit.com.

Thanks,

Bob

[JeremiahFitbit]

The weight logging endpoint is used by many applications, including Fitbit's own apps. If it were broken for 5 months, our health/automated/manual testing of the endpoint and the integration in apps would have failed. We would have received many complaints from users and other third-party app developers. That didn't happen.

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OK, I tell you what. Next time I report a problem (not that I'm hoping there will be another problem, but if there is), have the API devs contact me and I'll provide them with any source code and/or trace logs they want to see, as well as every opportunity for them to demonstrate why the error messages I get back from the server don't mean what they appear to say on the surface.

Cheers,

Bob