Steps in profile not matching steps in API response

[colton8]

Hey guys,

I'm attempting to fetch steps for a particular user and noticed the value returned doesn't match what is displayed within the user's profile. Please note the below response along with the user-id within the URL.

irb(main):018:0> fitbit.get_url("activities/tracker/steps/date/2016-02-02/2016-02-04.json")
ETHON: performed EASY effective_url=https://api.fitbit.com/1/user/-/activities/tracker/steps/date/2016-02-02/2016-02-04.json response_code=200 return_code=ok total_time=0.094443
=> {"activities-tracker-steps"=>[{"dateTime"=>"2016-02-02", "value"=>"11312"}, {"dateTime"=>"2016-02-03", "value"=>"6287"}, {"dateTime"=>"2016-02-04", "value"=>"5925"}]}
irb(main):019:0> fitbit.get_url("activities/steps/date/2016-02-02/2016-02-04.json")
ETHON: performed EASY effective_url=https://api.fitbit.com/1/user/-/activities/steps/date/2016-02-02/2016-02-04.json response_code=200 return_code=ok total_time=0.28420199999999995
=> {"activities-steps"=>[{"dateTime"=>"2016-02-02", "value"=>"11312"}, {"dateTime"=>"2016-02-03", "value"=>"6287"}, {"dateTime"=>"2016-02-04", "value"=>"5925"}]}

https://www.fitbit.com/user/3V7J57/activities/date/2016-02-02

The value displayed within the profile for Feb 2nd is 439 steps. Yet calling the API returns 11312?

Please advise,

Colton

[JeremiahFitbit]

I can't access that profile because of the privacy settings, so I'm not sure what might be going on. Whenever there is a discrepancy between the website or the API, the API is correct.

[AndrewFitbit]

@colton8 Perhaps you're looking at the activity log rather than the entire day. The total steps on February 2nd is 11,312. There's an activity record of 439 steps on that day. Maybe you're confusing the two? 

[colton8]

Apologizes Jeremiah, but it is my coworkers profile and I'm not at liberty to adjust his settings. Although I do believe Andrew is right.

Andrew, signing back into his account on the dashboard it does indeed show 11,312 steps for the day. Going to activities it shows NO logged activities, but does display an activity record with the steps mentioned.

Is there a page or something explaining these differences? How does something appear under 'Activities logged'? How does something appear under 'Activity Records'? Where do the other steps come from if they aren't in the other two ?

Apologizes if this is documented somewhere and I've missed it.

Cheers,

Colton

[AndrewFitbit]

No worries @colton8, thanks for confirming my suspicion. 

The "Activity record" refers to a recorded activity from the Flex tracker. Any activity that is manually logged, SmartTrack'd, or recorded by the Fitbit tracker will appear in the "Activity Log". You can check out our Activity and exercise FAQs for more details.