Golden Cheetah Garmin Connect - Download, archive, cloud-backup and auto-import your activities!

You are a runner, cyclist or triathlete? You love Golden Cheetah? You track your activities with Garmin devices? You want to download all of them from Garmin Connect? You want to archive, cloud-backup and import automatically into Golden Cheetah? Alright, where is the problem?!? Rise a feature request and ask for new Golden Cheetah functionality! But exactly this is easier said than done:

  1. Garmin charges an expensive one-time administrative fee to cover their extensive engineering and server support they require for running the Connect program.
  2. Golden Cheetah is an open source application and there might be no chance of any payment to Garmin for its use at all.
  3. As Garmin does also not offer alternatives the chances for a new Golden Cheetah feature are really low.

But there are tons of alternatives and workarounds. Here is mine.

Download, archive, backup, auto-import!

Apple claims writing a shell script is like riding a bike: „You fall off and scrape your knees a lot at first. With a bit more experience, you become comfortable riding them around…“ Awesome! For the rest I totally agree. „Shell scripting is perfect for creating small pieces of code that connect other tools together.“

Tooling

Before we are diving into details some insights on my tooling: Mac user, running their latest OSX. Additional to that my preferred cloud storage is Google Drive. The latter would not make any difference to a Dropbox, Box.com or another typical cloud storage.

What else you need

If it did not yet happen you need to download the following:

Initial configuration

Follow these steps for the initial configuration.

Folder structure

If you decide to create these folders in your preferred cloud storage, for example a Google Drive, they get synced automatically in the background from your local client to your cloud storage.

Overview of all important folders

Golden Cheetah

Configuring our awesome performance software step by step.

  1. Unzip and install Golden Cheetah.
  2. Open it.
  3. Create a new athlete.
  4. Change Golden Cheetahs athletes directory to the folder you just created:
    Open Preference > General > there it is. Save it.
  5. Close GoldenCheetah.
  6. Open it again.
  7. If you have to create your athlete again. Do it. It will re-create all subfolders in the new athlete directory.
  8. Configure your auto import folder:
    Go to Preference > General > Tab: auto imports. Save it.
  9. That´s it for Golden Cheetah. Close it.

My shell script

Copy content, paste content and save as sport.sh file.

	#################
	# My parameters #
	#################
	# My Garmin Connect username
	mygarminusername="USERNAME"
	# My Garmin Connect password
	mygarminpassword="PASSWORD"
	# My number of past activities to export from Garmin Connect. Hint: Garmin API limit is 1000 max.
	mynumberofexports="10"
	# My GoldenCheetah backup folder
	mybackupfolder=(~/GoogleDrive/Sport/GoldenCheetah/Backup/)
	# My Athletelibrary folder
	myathletelibraryfolder=(~/Documents/GoldenCheetah/AthleteLibrary/Johannes/)
	# My Garmin Connect export script folder
	mygarminconnectexportscriptfolder=(~/GoogleDrive/Sport/GoldenCheetah/GarminConnectScript/)
	# My Garmin Connect exported activity folder
	mygarminconnectexportsfolder=(~/GoogleDrive/Sport/GoldenCheetah/GarminConnectExports/Johannes/)
	#########################################
	# Export activities from Garmin Connect #
	#########################################
	python $mygarminconnectexportscriptfolder/gcexport.py -d $mygarminconnectexportsfolder -c "$mynumberofexports" -f original -u --username "$mygarminusername" --password "$mygarminpassword"
	#####################################################
	# Cleaning json as not used and required for backup #
	#####################################################
	cd $mygarminconnectexportsfolder
	rm *.json
	##############################
	# Open GoldenCheetah finally #
	##############################
	open -a GoldenCheetah
	###################
	# Action required #
	###################
	echo    Golden Cheeath opens
	echo    Import in background runs
	echo    ---------------------------------------
	echo    ----------- ACTION REQUIRED -----------
	echo    ---------------------------------------
	echo    Edit your downloaded activities
	echo    Save all edited activites
	echo    Create a backup?
	######################
	# Waiting for answer #
	######################
	read -p "[y] = yes. [n] = no " -n 1 -r
	echo    # (optional) move to a new line
	if [[ ! $REPLY =~ ^[Yy]$ ]]
	then
	    [[ "$0" = "$BASH_SOURCE" ]] && exit 1 || return 1 # handle exits from shell or function but don't exit interactive shell
	fi
	######################
	# Kill GoldenCheetah #
	######################
	pkill GoldenCheetah
	##################
	# Backup Section #
	##################
	######################
	# Grab Date und Year #
	######################
	todaysdate=$(date +%Y%m%d)
	todaysyear=$(date +%Y)
	##############
	# ZIP backup #
	##############
	# Keep history of 5 backups
	cd $mybackupfolder
	ls -dt *.zip | tail -n +5 | xargs rm -rf
	# Zips entire athleteslibrary folder and backups on daily basis
	zip -r -9 -x ~/GoogleDrive/Sport/GoldenCheetah/AthleteLibrary/Johannes/cache/\* ~/GoogleDrive/Sport/GoldenCheetah/AthleteLibrary/Johannes/imports/\* -o $mybackupfolder/"$todaysdate".zip $myathletelibraryfolder
	###############################
	# Archive exported activities #
	###############################
	# Check and create Year Folder
	mkdir $mygarminconnectexportsfolder/$todaysyear/
	# move previous files to archive
	mv $mygarminconnectexportsfolder/*.fit $mygarminconnectexportsfolder/$todaysyear/</pre>

Setting parameters

  1. Set your Garmin Connect username:
    mygarminusername=“yourusername“
  2. Set your Garmin Connect password:
    mygarminpassword=“yourgarminconnectpassword“
  3. Set your number of past activities to export from Garmin Connect:
    mynumberofexports=“10″
  4. Reference to your GoldenCheetah backup folder:
    mybackupfolder=(~/GoogleDrive/Sport/GoldenCheetah/Backup/)
  5. Reference to your Athletelibrary folder:
    myathletelibraryfolder=(~/Documents/GoldenCheetah/AthleteLibrary/Johannes/)
  6. Reference to your Garmin Connect export script folder:
    mygarminconnectexportscriptfolder=(~/GoogleDrive/Sport/GoldenCheetah/GarminConnectScript/)
  7. Reference to your Garmin Connect export folder:
    mygarminconnectexportsfolder=(~/GoogleDrive/Sport/GoldenCheetah/GarminConnectExports/Johannes/)

What the rest does

The following section explains in detail what the rest of the script does. But first: You don´t have to adjust anything else there. Everything got already configured with setting the parameters.

  1. Downloads activities from Garmin Connect
  2. Cleans json as not used and required for backup
  3. Opens GoldenCheetah finally
  4. Request user input if a backup shall be taken
  5. Waits for answer
  6. Kills GoldenCheetah if still open
  7. Starts backup section
  8. Grabs Date und Year
  9. Keeps history of most recent 5 backups
  10. Zips entire athleteslibrary folder and backups on daily basis
  11. Archives exported activities
  12. Checks and creates Year Folder
  13. Moves previous files to archive

Run it

Running the script is easy. There are various ways. Very old school with a simple terminal command: „sh sport.sh“. Or make sure that Python is installed and just double-click your *.sh.

How to recover a backup

Golden Cheetah athlete library

The most important folder is your athlete directory. Everything in there gets „backuped“ and can easily get recovered with overwriting a newly created athlete:

  1. Download, unzip, install and open GoldenCheetah.
  2. Create a new athlete.
  3. Change athlete directory.
  4. Close GoldenCheetah.
  5. Open GoldenCheetah again. Just to be on the safe side.
  6. Unzip latest ZIP from your backups.
  7. Replace new athlete folder with your Backup.
  8. Open Golden Cheetah.
  9. Backup recovered.

Disclaimer & License

No Guarantee

This script does NOT guarantee to get all your data or even download it correctly. Against my Garmin Connect account it works quite fine and smooth, but different Garmin Connect account settings or different data types could potentially cause problems.

Garmin Connect API

This is NOT an official feature of Garmin Connect, Garmin may very well make changes to their APIs that breaks this script (and they certainly did since this project got created for several times).

Golden Cheetah

This is NOT an official feature of Golden Cheetah, Golden Cheetah may very well make changes that breaks this script.

THIS SCRIPT IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY

It simulates a standard user session (i.e., in the browser), logging in using cookies and an authorization ticket. This makes the script pretty brittle. If you’re looking for a more reliable option, particularly if you wish to use this for some production service, Garmin does offer a paid API service.

Security Disclaimer

The way as the shell script is described has litte to no change of running securely. Passwords are stored plain in the script itself. It definitely has a lot of room for improvements. My intention is to keep it as simple and pragmatic for you. That is the basis to adjust it according your personal paranoia level. The most secure way would be to type it in every time you run the script.

License

MIT © 2018 Johannes Heinrich

Feedback

Contributions are warmly welcome, particularly if this script stops working with Garmin Connect. You may consider opening a GitHub issue first. New features, however simple, are encouraged. Other than that, thx for using this script.



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