Canvas API URLs

[JCardinal98]

Hi, I'm trying to use Canvas API request URLs to get some data, and I'm wondering how can I modify the URL to only receive certain fields instead of all of them? 

For example, the URL I'm working with is:

https://canvas.instructure.com/api/v1/courses/?enrollment_state=active

and I only want to see the names of each course in the response. I've tried adding ' &fields=name ' to the end of the above URL and it does not affect the results at all. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[danielcharles]

Hi, You just add the endpoints to the URL to you Canvas installation.

[jsavage2]

Hi, @JCardinal98,

You need to parse the response. The API will always return a JSON-encoded data object (or list of objects). In this case, it's a list of Course objects.

There is no option in the API to return an incomplete object or specific fields from an object.

It seems like what you're trying to do, here, is write a report, but the API itself isn't really a reporting tool: it's a programming interface. Whatever tool you're using to access the API needs to ingest the JSON and extract the information you need. Most programming languages have standard JSON libraries to do this, and there are also Canvas-specific libraries for several common languages that can help streamline accessing the API.

If you really want to hand-code custom reports, though, the GraphQL endpoint can provide the information you're looking for. As the name suggests, GraphQL is a query language, not an API per se, and the fields returned by queries can be customized.