Automated Calories Tracker

GitHub

Overview

Automated Calories Tracker is a script I wrote in Python which uses an unofficial MyFitnessPal API to fetch macronutrients data from a user and exports it into a google spreadsheet.

I wrote this script for an Online Personal Trainer in order to improve her online services by removing the boring work each client had to do when manually inputting their data into the spreadsheet.

This spreadsheet was co-created by me and works as follows:

  • Run the script with the username and the range of data required
  • Data is exported onto a sheet called MyFitnessPal
  • Formulas fetch that data and use it on another sheet to calculate averages
python myfitnesspal.py nuno_c11 2021/01/01 2021/01/29
Macronutriens table on a google spreadsheet
Macronutriens table on a google spreadsheet

Approach

Since I barely knew any Python at this stage the first thing I did before actually going forward with the project was to learn how the API worked and decide if it was easy enough to learn the Python skills necessary to implement the script.

Once I understood how the API worked I started googling how to do X and Y in Python, understood the very basics of Python data structures and implemented a Minimum Viable Product(MVP) to start testing.

Luckily the API didn't give me many problems with installation and setup and in a few days, I was able to make this work as I wanted.

Challenges

  • Being friend with errors

    Figuring out how to work with errors from the API was cumbersome. I had to do plenty of tests to figure out which inputs would work and restricted user input to a very specific format.

  • Dealing with Google auth system

    It wasn't very hard but definitely a challenge, being the first time I dealt with this I had to follow a short online tutorial that guided me on how to set this up. Safe to say I understood the concept but would require more work with this to fully understand how it works.

  • Go live by creating a SPA

    Putting the script online with a Single Page Application would allow a user to have an account and run the script through a form. This requires some back-end knowledge, to safely handle sensitive data such as user login/password and google auth token, which I have yet to learn.