Get Breathing Rate Summary by Interval
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Get Breathing Rate Summary by Interval

This endpoint returns average breathing rate data for a date range. Breathing Rate data applies specifically to a user’s “main sleep,” which is the longest single period of time during which they were asleep on a given date.

The single date measurements are provided at the end of a period of sleep. The data returned can and often does reflect a sleep period that began the day before. For example, if you request a daily breathing rate for 2021-12-22, it may include measurements that were taken the previous night on 2021-12-21 when the user started to sleep.

It uses units that correspond to the Accept-Language header provided.

Scope: respiratory_rate


Request

GET /1/user/[user-id]/br/date/[start-date]/[end-date].json

URI Arguments
user-id required The encoded ID of the user. Use "-" (dash) for current logged-in user.
start-date required The date in the format yyyy-MM-dd or today.
end-date required The date in the format yyyy-MM-dd or today.

Maximum range: 30 days

Request Headers
authorization required Specify the token type and Fitbit user’s access token.
Token type: Bearer
accept optional The media type of the response content the client is expecting.
Supported: application/json
accept-language optional The measurement unit system to use for response values. See Localization.
accept-locale optional The locale to use for response values. See Localization.

Examples
GET https://api.fitbit.com/1/user/-/br/date/2021-10-25/2021-11-24.json
GET https://api.fitbit.com/1/user/GGNJL9/br/date/2021-10-01/2021-10-04.json
curl -X GET "https://api.fitbit.com/1/user/-/br/date/2021-10-25/2021-11-24.json" \
-H "accept: application/json" \
-H "authorization: Bearer <access_token>"


Response

Element Name Description
br : dateTime The sleep log date specified in the format YYYY-MM-DD.
br : value : breathingRate The average number of breaths taken per minute.
{
  "br": [
    {
      "value": {
        "breathingRate": 17.8
      },
      "dateTime": "2021-10-25"
    },
    {
      "value": {
        "breathingRate": 17.9
      },
      "dateTime": "2021-10-26"
    }
  ]
}
      

Response Headers
content-type The media type of the response content being sent to the client.
Supported: application/json
fitbit-rate-limit-limit The quota number of calls.
fitbit-rate-limit-remaining The number of calls remaining before hitting the rate limit.
fitbit-rate-limit-reset The number of seconds until the rate limit resets.

Note: The rate limit headers are approximate and asynchronously updated. This means that there may be a minor delay in the decrementing of remaining requests. This could result in your application receiving an unexpected 429 response if you don't track the total number of requests you make yourself.

Response Type

HTTP Status Code HTTP response code. List of codes are found in the Troubleshooting Guide.
Status Message Description of the status code.
Response Body Contains the JSON response to the API call. When errors are returned by the API call, the errorType, fieldName and message text will provide more information to the cause of the failure.

Response Codes
200 A successful request.
400 The request had bad syntax or was inherently impossible to be satisfied.
401 The request requires user authentication.

Note: For a complete list of response codes, please refer to the Troubleshooting Guide.

Additional Information

Sleep periods

Interval values reflect breathing rate measurements taken for periods of sleep between two dates. For most users, values will span multiple dates to account for breathing rates on the date at which the summary was provided, and during the previous night’s sleep.

Collecting breathing rate data

Breathing rate data is collected when the user is in an extended period of sleep of at least 3 hours.

There are many factors that can affect a user’s breathing rate value. Recording the data while a person is asleep allows the Fitbit device to correctly and accurately collect breathing rate data. Data is only processed when the user is still. If a user moves too much or their sleep session is too short, this can prevent breathing rate data from being processed correctly. In addition, if recorded data is incapable of computing specific sleep stages for a period of sleep, this will compromise the user’s ability to retrieve a breathing rate value.

The device automatically stops collecting breathing rate data after it determines the user is awake, typically through physical movements. Once the user syncs their device, breathing rate data will begin processing for that sleep period. It usually takes up to 15 minutes for the breathing rate data to be processed and made available to download.

You can read more about data accuracy on https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-021-00493-6

Subscription Support for Breathing Rate

Breathing Rate does not support subscription notifications (webhooks). Since Breathing Rate is recorded during periods of sleep,
the sleep notification arrival time can be used to estimate when the Breathing Rate data will be available (See the "Collecting Data" section). For applications that do not track sleep, or cannot retrieve sleep data, we recommend querying the Breathing Rate data once or twice a day to determine if new data is available (e.g. 12 noon and midnight).

Rate limit

The breathing rate endpoints are bound by our standard rate limit. See Rate Limits.

Device compatibility

Breathing rate data is retrieved from the user’s Fitbit account. This gives the user secure and transparent control over their data. The data is thenprocessed and made available through the API after the user syncs their device with the Fitbit data service.

Most of the current devices sold support breathing rate data collection. See the Fitbit Product page to determine if your specific device supports breathing rate.