Strava Authentication Update

Yesterday (30th September 2019) I released an update migrating over to Strava’s updated authentication process.  The first time you revisit VeloViewer after this date you will be re-prompted to allow VeloViewer access to your Strava data.  The number of options that users agree to allow access to has increased and below I will explain why VeloViewer requires the options being asked for. Currently VeloViewer will only work if you leave all of the options selected even if you don’t chose to use all of those features within VeloViewer.

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Strava API Changes – Rate Limiting and Increased Privacy

A few changes are coming to the Strava api over the next couple of weeks, the main details of which I’ll leave for their official announcement. There are however a couple of things in those changes that will affect VeloViewer to a limited extent so here’s some info on what that will mean.

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Strava API Troubles

Api ProblemsAs a number of you may have noticed, since the site going down last week there has been a significant increase in the number of errors encountered around the site, in particularly on the update page. For some reason, since the site going down, the veloviewer.com server no longer has access to Strava’s API. This could be because either my hosting company has blocked those requests from being made or Strava has blocked requests from that server. At present I’m not sure which.

Strava are currently looking into it from their end but weren’t specifically aware of calls from my server being blocked. I’m more inclined to point the finger at my hosting company but they seem less than willing to investigate the problem. Once confirmed that the restriction isn’t at the Strava end then I’ll press much harder for my hosting company to diagnose and resolve the issue.

I’ve got a work-around by using one of my other websites to act as a go between for the Strava API requests but it seems a little less reliable than the original requests from the veloviewer.com server. Maybe because its a Windows server rather than Linux (I have no idea really)?

What this seems to be resulting in is a number of you getting a lot more errors popping up, especially on the update screen. All the people who have been in touch had been using IE and switching over to Google Chrome has sorted the issue out. Chrome is much faster at running the JavaScript that the update process heavily uses which might be the reason why it performs more reliably. Also, you could just been hitting the server when lots of other people are so maybe give it an hour or so and try again. VeloViewer is getting remarkably popular which is stretching it’s capacity somewhat!

So, if you’re getting lots of errors then try switching to Google Chrome and see if that helps. If not then post a comment (or send me an email) including your Strava id.

I’ll make sure the new, V3 update process is more resilient to errors from the Strava API. Until then, sorry for any inconvenience.