[ARCHIVED] Use API to get user's Last Login date?

[brian_mullins]

I'm not seeing a way to use the API to get the user's last login date...

Here's my scenario: We are creating user accounts for our parents based on them having a similar account in our SIS. However, once the account is created (I'm doing that via the SIS Imports) I want to turn off notifications, but only if the account has never been accessed. So, I need to get that last accessed date from the API. I know about the Last User Access Account Report, but that thing takes forever to run. Is there a way I can simply look this up for a single user via the API?

Thanks,

Brian

#api‌ #api calls‌ #last user access‌

[bneporadny]

Hi Brian,

I haven't found away to pull a user's last login in via an api call.  I know you can find it if you are using canvas data or by using the last user access report as you stated.  I know there is away to get a students last participation time within a course, but not just the last time a specific user has logged in. 

I personally use the #last user access‌ to accomplish this and have it run and download on a nightly basis into our own SQL tables so that we can use it in multiple reports that we have put together. 

I am going to share this over with the Canvas Developers‌ group in case someone in there has found an API call that would allow for this. 

Brian

[James]

 @brian_mullins , I use the List user logins API call.

Edit: That wasn't true. My six year old would tell me I lied.

Turns out I use the Query by Login or the Query by User endpoint of the Authentications Log.

[bneporadny]

Thanks James. I am not sure how I over looked that one, but glad you knew about it!

[brian_mullins]

 @James ‌ Thanks for that. However, it doesn't appear to provide any information about the last login date (the time they actually connected). That's what I'd need to determine if it's OK to turn off their notifications....if no access, then it's not an 'active' account.

[James]

Sorry about that,  @brian_mullins .

This is what happens you have too many things going on.

I know that I pull the information for a report that is fetched in real-time that shows the last 5 Canvas logins. It's not clean code, so I thought I could save some time looking in the API. I found one that I thought was it, but obviously wasn't it.

I went to the code and dug through it to find the right call. I'm actually using and it's the Authentications Log API that I'm using.

Query by login

GET /api/v1/audit/authentication/logins/:login_id

It accepts a start_time and end_time. I'm not sure how far they go back (some event logs only go back a year), but if you are interested in just the last one, you could put the per_page=1 parameter on there to only get the last one.

Edit -- I'm having a bad day.

I actually use the Query by User endpoint of the same API. I guess it depends on whether you know the user ID or the login ID.

GET /api/v1/audit/authentication/users/:user_id

[brian_mullins]

That works perfect,  @James ‌! Thanks!

Brian

[bneporadny]

Brian,

I guess back to what I originally said about using the #last user access‌ report and downloading it on a daily basis and then doing a query against the data that was downloaded to find those who have never logged in.  

Is this an option for you?

[brian_mullins]

Yes, that's an option, but my current process is:

1) Pull provisioning report ---this takes almost 2 hours to complete.

2) Use the above to reconcile our SIS -- a few minutes

3) Use the above to generate CSV files for SIS Import -- a few minutes

4) Send the SIS Import --- about an hour

So, that's just under 3 hours start to finish. In my testing, the Last User Access report takes about another hour. This seems ridiculous. 

Brian

[pklove]

Here is another way (Retrieving admin user last login via API  😞

     .../api/v1/accounts/1/users?search_term=TheUser&include[]=last_login

You can get multiple responses, but easy to check for the one you want.

Given your use case, you might also want to consider the last_activity_at in a course.  This will come back in an enrolments call:

   .../api/v1/users/:userid/enrollments

You have to then iterate over the enrolments.

[jperkins]

I found the (undocumented) endpoint that does this. It is used by the new account people tab. (also threw in how to get emails included).

/api/v1/accounts/:account_id/users?include[]=last_login&include[]=email

OR find an individual user below

/api/v1/accounts/:account_id/users?include[]=last_login&include[]=email&search_term=:sis_user_id (or name or email, whatever works in the people tab UI)