Error 404 when uploading swimming FIT file

[hophoff]

On June 22/23 for some users of our app the upload failed for FIT files with swimming data. The response error when uploading the FIT file was:

status: 404 error: {"message":"Record Not Found","errors":[{"resource":"resource","field":"path","code":"invalid"}]}

Without any change on our site, the problem disappeared on June 24. The same swimming data FIT files that caused the 404 error could be uploaded succesfully. So it looks Strava fixed it.

But yesterday (June 29) or the day before, the problem happened again. And it continues today. Not for all users who upload swimming data FIT files, but for some of them, in different countries on different continents.

We reported the issue to Strava, added a concrete example (user id and time the problem happened) and the response was that they couldn't look into it. Because we don't know the source of this issue, and we can't reproduce it ourselves, we hoped that Strava would have a look into their log files, but it seems they don't want to do this. We are desperately looking for  solution. 

Do you experience the same problem when uploading certain FIT files? Do you have a suggestion what could be the cause? Please reply on this topic.

[hophoff · Accepted solution]

We found the cause of this issue. When we upload a FIT file for swimming activities, we add a description field to the upload (as specified on https://developers.strava.com/docs/uploads/ ). But when the description string has some special characters Strava rejects the upload with the 404 error. This is why it only happened with users who use the Turkish langauage, Spanish language or other languages with special characters. We think that this didn't happen in the past. But we will add a workaround when this error occurs by replacing the description field with the english translation. Welcome in the international world of Strava 😞