Fatsecret food diary CSV export tool

Hello Everybody.

Having just joined a week ago I immediately liked the site. However found myself searching for an alternative way to display the food diary or export it.

Searching trough the forums I found several people looking for the same thing but no one was successful. so I have taken it up on myself to create a CSV export tool.

The first version is now finished and working:


Why?
Fatsecret2csv was created to address the issue of missing export functionality. Many people have the need to use the data they have entered to display it in a variety of ways for many reasons. Maybe you want to use excel to graph your fat intake over time? Maybe you need to print a food log to bring to your doctor? Maybe you just want to store the data save somewhere for use later.

How?
The tool uses your Internet Explorer (which needs to be logged in to www.fatsecret.com) to launch the www.fatsecret.com website. From their on it goes trough specified number of days and collects all your items out of your food log and add's them to a comma eperated list. Alternatively you can also use tab seperation for easy copy paste into excel. At the end the tool copies the output to your clipboard so you can simply paste (ctrl + v) the output into any text editor or application. It also offers you to store the results in a file.

Requirements?
You need the Microsoft .net framework version 2 installed. You also need to have logged in to www.fatsecret.com via Internet Explorer.

You can download the app here:
http://baddogs.de/fatsecret2csv.zip (Size 7 KB)

I have decided to use a stand alone application rather than a web app as this way my app does not require you to enter your login details as it simply uses your own web browser.

Thanks to fatsecret.com for their great website.

Please feel free to provide feedback in this thread.

DerFelix

Wonder if anyone found it useful so far...

Yes, quite useful. I discovered your post just today. BIG thanks.

I use it to pull the data and put it in an easily emailable format so I can send to my friend who is helping me with my diet.

I would LOVE it if it could also pull the data from the Diet Calendar and Excercise Journal too.

VERY glad to find this! A doctor wanted a diet diary and I was using fatsecret to keep track (just assuming I'd be able to export it somehow - apparently not a built in feature).

I'm very happy I can use your tool to export the data to something useful to submit. Thank you!

Hi,

Thank you very much for your feedback. Similar to chizUFL I created the tool as I wanted a way to create a printable food log broken down per day in order to give it to my doctor.

GoodApollo, so far I had not thought about including it as personally I don't like the exercise tracker so I am not using it (the calorie burnt estimations seem just to overoptimistic for me).

If I got a few hours spare I might look into adding this to the export tool. If there is demand it surely is worth it. Just not sure when... Will let you know if I get around to it.

DerFelix

would LOVE this.... sadly however am on mac but great app!

Definitely a useful tool; being able to pull the details out for analysis in a spreadsheet is great.

awesome awesome awesome! My trainer wnats to see my food diary and this will be way easier than scrolling through my phone! Thank you

Is there any way to get it to show future dates, like a week?

There must be some good developers out there who can use the API to get some good reports from our data happening. Come on technerds

Thanks again for all the feedback.

@rubykate:
Sorry that I can not be of more help for you. Maybe you have a friend where you can simply go to once a week / month and quickly use the app then paste it into excel or a textfile and mail it to yourself?

@JaineBoo:
I had a look at the API initially and decided not to use it. Mainly as I do not want to have a website that other users have to login to. I felt this is something people might feel more comfortable using "on their own" not risking to share the data. Beside this it was in the end easier to simply write a plugin to the browser for me (did that several times).

@lozingmybeh...:
Well fatsecret only shows you today and tomorrow tops. There is a trick to access it regardless however. Go to tomorrows day then look at your browser, it will read something like:
http://fatsecret.com/Diary.aspx?pa=fj&dt=14655
simply increase the number at DT by 1.

However I doubt it to be useful to export future days as CSV as you will never be absolutely sure if you really end up all that you planned for.

Thanks !

EDIT: works great with open office too

Just downloaded and started to play with it. Helps a lot for those wanting to look at graphs for carbs/etc vs weight change. Suggestion: could you toss in a subtotal by day, or perhaps an option to just download each day's total kcal, fat, carbs, prot *and* weight? So we could organize our spreadsheets easier?

Thank you, thank you DerFelix! It's so great to be able to summarize my food journal. I've got a follow-up appointment with a nutritionist next week and this will really help. Hopefully FS will develope some reporting tools, so this information can be easily available to everyone. Thanks again.

DerFelix,

Thank you very much. I have been trying FatSecret, plus two other food and exercise tracking programs two days now to see which one I want to use on a permanent basis. I like FatSecret the best but not having a convenient way to export the data would have killed it for me. I found I could copy the daily tracked total amounts and paste it into Excel and then parse the data which is put in just one cell using the text to columns feature, but that did not capture the individual food entries.

Thanks to you I may select FatSecret as the program I keep. (I like the Android barcode input and sync capability.)

I can't imagine why FatSecret does not have an export capability (nor a graphing one to show visually over time the level of the different food intakes).

Thanks a lot! This is wonderful!

Thanks this is great-- How difficult is it to add a similar thing for exercise and weight diaries?

hey, thanks for your hard work on this app, running Linux at home but can sneak in on the office Windows box if I need to. Would be nice if Fatsecret incorporated something similar right in the site for food, excercise, weight, etc... that way you wouldn't have to do the work thanks again though!

Hey man, nice work.
Any chance you could share the source files?
or give a heads up on the api you used?

Thanks.

Hey fyi there's a print function in the food diary now that you can generate spreadsheets on. Cool.