[ARCHIVED] Getting a list of ALL courses.

[dpharris]

I am using the API: 

GET /api/v1/courses

The API is returning a subset of my courses, and I can't determine why. It doesn't seem to matter whether I'm a teacher, student or observer. 

I am wanting a list of all classes where I am a teacher, regardless of whether it is currently active or not.

Assistance is appreciated.

[James · Accepted solution]

 @dpharris ,

Based on the description you give, there's a high probability that you're experiencing the built-in pagination, which limits the number of results to 10 in most cases.

If all of your responses never have more 10 responses, then this is almost certainly a component of the problem.

Try adding per_page=100 to your query string: GET /api/v1/courses/per_page=100.  And no, when you get over 100 courses, you cannot make that 100 any larger.

There are other things that might be going on, but for teachers and admins, you get all of your courses that aren't deleted by default and you probably don't care about the deleted courses. That makes me strongly suspect it's a pagination issue.

[dpharris]

This is exactly the answer.  Did I miss something in the documentation?

[James]

At the top of the API documentation is a section called Basics. Be sure you've read through that as it's general information that doesn't fit in with the specifics, but applies to all of them. If you haven't read through those, you would not suspect pagination was the issue to know to look for pagination. 

Another good place is to search the community and possibly join the Canvas Developers group. There are some really good threads there, including Canvas APIs: Getting started, the practical ins and outs, gotchas, tips, and tricks. Searching, provided you get the right keywords, will often turn up related issues and the solutions. The pagination thing catches many new API users.

[RupertRussell]

I have an alternative approach to this question.

I started by asking ChatGPT to write me the code.

It didn't quite get it to work and I gave up on reprompting it.
This is one of the versions of the code it wrote:

If you want to manually enter the page number for pagination, you can modify the script to accept user input. Here's how you can do it:

```python
import os
import requests
import csv

# Replace these variables with your Canvas API token and base URL
API_TOKEN = 'your_api_token_here'
BASE_URL = 'https://your_canvas_instance_url/api/v1/'

# Set up headers with Authorization token
headers = {
'Authorization': 'Bearer ' + API_TOKEN,
}

# Manually enter the page number for pagination
page_number = input("Enter the page number: ")

# API endpoint to list courses with per_page=100
url = f"{BASE_URL}courses?per_page=100&page={page_number}"

# Make a GET request to the Canvas API
response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)

# Check if the request was successful (status code 200)
if response.status_code == 200:
# Parse JSON response
courses = response.json()

# Determine the next CSV file number
csv_number = 1
while os.path.exists(f"courses_{csv_number:03d}.csv"):
csv_number += 1

# Write course data to CSV file
csv_filename = f"courses_{csv_number:03d}.csv"
with open(csv_filename, 'w', newline='', encoding='utf-8') as csvfile:
csv_writer = csv.writer(csvfile)
csv_writer.writerow(['Course Number', 'Course Name'])

# Iterate over courses and write to CSV
for course in courses:
csv_writer.writerow([course['id'], course['name']])

print(f"Course data saved to {csv_filename}")
else:
print(f"Failed to retrieve courses. Status code: {response.status_code}")

```

This script will prompt you to manually enter the page number for pagination. Based on the provided page number, it will fetch the courses from the Canvas API and save them to a CSV file with the appropriate course number and name columns.

I then asked Canvas support for help with the API and they came up with this:

Agent Brett H

( 1s ) Brett H: Hi Rupert! How can I help you today?
( 52s ) Rupert: Hi I am trying to get a list of all the canvas units at ACU. I am wanting the canvas unit number & name
( 1m 18s ) Brett H: Ok, when you say unit are you referring to a canvas course ?
( 1m 18s ) Rupert: I am playing with API calls which is partly working but it stops at 32 courses
( 1m 33s ) Rupert: Sorry yes Course
( 1m 53s ) Rupert: (our terminology is unit)
( 2m 58s ) Brett H: Ok, So I do not have an API call but you can certainly run a report here in your instance that will pull that information:https://canvas.acu.edu.au/accounts/self/settings#tab-reports
( 3m 39s ) Brett H: I would recommend a 'Provisioning report' and configure that to courses
Thanks!

Canvas Support

I then went to ask canvas support for help on the API pagination issue and started off with the broad question of how to get a list of all the Canvas Courses.  This is what they came up with and it works!

[RupertRussell]

This is what the report looks like.  Lot's of handy information