Info/Warning

This script pre-dates Fitbit's transition to OAuth 2. Since writing this, I've created a new set of scripts for the Fitbit API in Ruby using fitgem, but it's not been updated to reliably work with OAuth 2 either.

I wish I had better news or a more helpful suggestion.

What is this?

A script to upload Weightbot weights to Fitbit.

It's actually two Perl scripts: one to request a read-write OAuth token from Fitbit, and another to upload a CSV file from Weightbot. (It's much faster than doing it yourself.)

What You'll Need:

1. OAuthSimple.pl. Download it and put it right next to request_token.pl and upload_data.pl.

2. Your Weightbot CSV data.

3. A registered Fitbit application with read-write access, and its API secrets.

How To Do It:

1. Get set up with Fitbit and its API keys.

Register an application with Fitbit:

Go to https://dev.fitbit.com/apps/new and register a new application. Set "Application Type" to "Desktop". Leave "Callback URL" blank. Set "Default Access Type" to "Read & Write".

Save the API keys:

Make a file in your home directory named .api_keys:

touch ~/.api_keys

View your application on dev.fitbit.com. The details page will have entries for "Consumer key" and "Consumer secret". Copy those into your .api_keys, one per line:

> cat .api_keys
…
fitbit_uploader_oauth_consumer_key=<consumer key>
fitbit_uploader_oauth_shared_secret=<consumer secret>
…

2. Request an OAuth token:

With an application and a Fitbit account, request_token.pl can request OAuth access on your behalf and spit out a read-write token and secret.

(If you haven't already, download OAuthSimple.pl so that Perl can talk to Fitbit.)

Run request_token.pl: perl request_token.pl. It will open a webpage that requests OAuth read-write access for your Fitbit application. Select "Allow". Fitbit will display a long PIN. Copy and paste that PIN into the terminal where request_token.pl is waiting, and hit enter.

request_token.pl will finish handshaking with Fitbit, and will print out:

OAuth Token:
<oauth token>
OAuth Token Secret:
<oauth token secret>

Add these into .api_keys. When you're done, it should look like:

> cat .api_keys
…
fitbit_uploader_oauth_consumer_key=<consumer key>
fitbit_uploader_oauth_shared_secret=<consumer secret>
fitbit_uploader_oauth_token=<oauth token>
fitbit_uploader_oauth_token_secret=<oauth token secret>
…

For example,

…
fitbit_uploader_oauth_consumer_key=abcd1234
fitbit_uploader_oauth_shared_secret=ef0123ab
…

3. Run upload_data.pl.

perl upload_data.pl will toss everything at Fitbit's API.

What you have in your Weightbot CSV file is up to you. There's an early return clause in upload_data.pl if you only need it to run for a few days. It's safe to run the script multiple times: in my testing, Fitbit won't duplicate the posts, and the last-uploaded entry for that date wins.