What are the differences between the calories time series?

[awoulfe]

Can you explain what each of these caloric measures mean? I cannot determine the difference. These are from the time series API calls.

- activities/calories

- activities/activityCalories

- activities/tracker/calories

- activities/tracker/activityCalories   

[awoulfe]

Are there any related topics where I can view this answer? I have searched the google group and the community and found some references to the caloric measure but not to the level of detail for each of these calls.

[ibahdanau]

https://wiki.fitbit.com/display/API/API-Get-Time-Series

[awoulfe]

These are the only notes about those 4 calls.

2. activities/tracker/... resources represent the daily activity values logged by the tracker device only, excluding the manual activity log entries.
3. activities/tracker/calories doesn't include the Calorie Estimation (EER) calculations for any dates even if they are turned on for the user's profile and use BMR level instead.

I don't think it answers my question. I still can't determine what measure of calories that each of the calls return. I think that the calls with tracker return only measured info but what is the difference between:

activities/tracker/calories

activities/tracker/activityCalories  

[JeremiahFitbit]

- activities/calories

The top level time series for calories burned inclusive of BMR, tracked activity, and manually logged activities.

- activities/activityCalories

The number of calories burned during the day for periods of time the user was active above sedentary level. This value calculated minute by minute for minutes that follow under this criteria and also include both activity burned calories and BMR.

- activities/tracker/calories

Calories burned inclusive of BMR according to movement captured by the Fitbit tracker

- activities/tracker/activityCalories  

Similar to activities/activityCalories, but using tracker data only, meaning that manually logged activities are excluded.

[awoulfe]

Jeremiah,

Thank you. That was incredibly helpful. This may be worthy of an additional chain, but when I call the following:

http://api.fitbit.com/1/user/-/activities/calories/2014-07-07/7d.xml

I should expect to see a date and calorie value for each of the last 7 days (I think). Instead, regardless of which of the calorie calls in the time series I make, I get the following response which I clipped and only pasted the first few lines as it is lengthy. It almost looks  as if I am receiving your entire catalogue of activity options and no calorie reference. Is this a bug or is there a mistake in URL? I am seeing this if I call from my app and from within the API explorer.

Response:

"<result>
  <categories>
    <activityCategory>
      <activities>
        <activity>
          <accessLevel>PUBLIC</accessLevel>
          <activityLevels>
            <activityLevel>
              <id>3016</id>
              <maxSpeedMPH>-1</maxSpeedMPH>
              <mets>8.5</mets>
              <minSpeedMPH>-1</minSpeedMPH>
              <name>6 - 8 inch step</name>
            </activityLevel>
            <activityLevel>
              <id>3017</id>
              <maxSpeedMPH>-1</maxSpeedMPH>
              <mets>10</mets>
              <minSpeedMPH>-1</minSpeedMPH>
              <name>10 - 12 inch step</name>
            </activityLevel>
          </activityLevels>
          <hasSpeed>false</hasSpeed>
          <id>90004</id>
          <name>Aerobic step</name>
        </activity>
        <activity>
          <accessLevel>PUBLIC</accessLevel>
          <hasSpeed>false</hasSpeed>
          <id>3015</id>
          <mets>6.5</mets>
          <name>Aerobic, general</name>
        </activity>
        <activity>
          <accessLevel>PUBLIC</accessLevel>
          <activityLevels>
            <activityLevel>
              <id>3020</id>
              <maxSpeedMPH>-1</maxSpeedMPH>
              <mets>5</mets>
              <minSpeedMPH>-1</minSpeedMPH>
              <name>low impact</name>
            </activityLevel>
            <activityLevel>
              <id>3021</id>
              <maxSpeedMPH>-1</maxSpeedMPH>
              <mets>7</mets>
              <minSpeedMPH>-1</minSpeedMPH>
              <name>high impact</name>
            </activityLevel>"

[JeremiahFitbit · Accepted solution]

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@awoulfe wrote:

Jeremiah,

Thank you. That was incredibly helpful. This may be worthy of an additional chain, but when I call the following:

http://api.fitbit.com/1/user/-/activities/calories/2014-07-07/7d.xml

I should expect to see a date and calorie value for each of the last 7 days (I think). Instead, regardless of which of the calorie calls in the time series I make, I get the following response which I clipped and only pasted the first few lines as it is lengthy. It almost looks  as if I am receiving your entire catalogue of activity options and no calorie reference. Is this a bug or is there a mistake in URL? I am seeing this if I call from my app and from within the API explorer.

---

You're not calling a valid endpoint (and for what it's worth, the Fitbit API is not returning an error like it should be).

You called:

/1/user/-/activities/calories/2014-07-07/7d.xml

It should be:
/1/user/-/activities/calories/date/2014-07-07/7d.xml

[astor]

Hi,

Based on the definitions you provided it seems that the only difference between activities/calories and activities/tracker calories are the manually logged activities.  Is this correct?

Thank you!