Python Fitbit dashboard 401 error, even when logged in browser

[432]

My code

The error returned on program startup

In the image, the "Connected" light is off and shows an error code in red numbers at startup. The green light indicates connection to Fitbit's servers.

[Kilrah]

Your python code isn't your browser, the site won't know you're "logged in" unless your code passes it an authentication cookie generated on a successful login. 

 

But you import the python fitbit module without using it, probably much easier to use the API that way with an API key for authentication. 

[432]

4 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Your python code isn't your browser, the site won't know you're "logged in" unless your code passes it an authentication cookie generated on a successful login. 

 

But you import the python fitbit module without using it, probably much easier to use the API that way with an API key for authentication. 

It returned a webpage saying my app made an invalid request.

[432]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

Your python code isn't your browser, the site won't know you're "logged in" unless your code passes it an authentication cookie generated on a successful login. 

 

But you import the python fitbit module without using it, probably much easier to use the API that way with an API key for authentication. 

Did you look at my code and the error image?

[elpiop]

401 indicates that you are not authenticated to access the API. You need to authenticate to retrieve data from it. 

[Eigenvektor]

9 hours ago, 432 said:

It returned a webpage saying my app made an invalid request.

That's what a web API does, it returns some type of document (HTML, JSON, …). What type of document it returns depends on the request's Accept-header and whether the API supports that type. If you don't specify an Accept-header or they don't support that type, you'll get whatever is their default.

 

That doesn't mean being signed into their website on a browser magically caries over to your Python code. The browser is not going to share its authentication with your app (or rather, your app can't access the authentication token owned by your browser).

 

You'll first need to make an authentication request in your Python code, store the authentication token that comes back (most likely a cookie) and then include that in all future requests (as long as that authentication token is valid). Once the token expires you'll need to authenticate again. Without any type of authentication, I'd expect to get a HTTP status code 401 ("Unauthorized") for most of their API endpoints.