Course Navigation API Sequence

[cgaudreau]

Hello, Canvas Community.

API calls are not in within my wheelhouse, and I've run into a roadblock I'm hoping someone can assist me with.

I have the initial API call for Tabs (Course Navigation) working as expected and can run one at a time.

However, when it comes to course consistency I'm looking for an easy way to run a sequence so that I can use PUT to layout the course navigation all at once. Tests with Postman haven't yielded the results I was hoping for.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thank you in advance!

[chriscas]

Hi @cgaudreau,

For clarity, Are you looking to set the course navigation menu to a specific set of items (and order) for every course in your instance/subaccount?  If that's your goal, I think it's going to be a big chain of put calls for every course with this method, but maybe we could brainstorm for an alternative.

-Chris

[cgaudreau]

@chriscas - Thanks for the speedy reply, and apologies for not clarifying further, but you nailed it. (Told you, it's not my wheelhouse!)

During Covid, we established a sequence for course navigation that has stuck to this day. However, faculty often adjust the navigation or don't update it. Therefore, we have a variety of experiences for our students. Our center is looking to leverage an easier way to set up this navigation rather than going into each course and adjusting the settings by hand.

For context, we're looking at the following:

1. Home
2. Announcements
3. Syllabus
4. (External Tool)
5. Modules
6. Assignments
7. Discussions
8. Grades
9. Attendance
10. (External Tool)
11. (External Tool)
12. (External Tool)

However, it's not for every course in our instance. We want this for our traditional undergraduate courses, but have two other divisions that this would not impact.

Does that better help outline the request?

[agschmid]

Hi @cgaudreau ,

Would setting up a course with the navigation the way you'd like it as a template and apply the template to the account work?

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Admin-Guide/How-do-I-enable-a-course-as-a-course-template/ta-p/46...

[cgaudreau]

@agschmid While that is a great solution, as it turns out the majority of the courses we need to rectify are the ones that don't pass by our teams or - for one reason or another - get lost in the shuffle.

Thanks for raising, as it is something to consider for future rebuilds.

[James]

@cgaudreau 

Through the API, you would need to set each one individually. You really need to be careful with the position property when you do this as they change if you move things around. You'll also need to do them sequentially rather than in parallel. All of that makes the process take longer than it should.

Within Canvas (or a headless browser logged into Canvas), you can make a non-API call to POST /courses/:course_id/update_nav to set the order all at once. It takes a tabs_json array with the tabs listed in the order you want them to appear.

It looks something like this (I removed a lot of the navigation tabs to keep the size small):

{
  "tabs_json": [
    {"id": 0},
    {"id": 14},
    {"id": 8},
    {"id": 5},
    {"id": "context_external_tool_17211"},
    {"id": "context_external_tool_17458"},
    {"id": "context_external_tool_1372207","hidden": true},
    {"id": 18,"hidden": true}
  ]
}

Again, that's a non-API call. Specify the authenticity_token in the request to provide authentication.

[cgaudreau]

Thanks, @James. While taking longer than it should, it certainly looks like this will help point us in the right direction. Once I'm able to run a few tests, I'll double back. Much appreciated!