Finding cross listed section from course with rest API

[ulrik_sandgren]

How should an integration work to find a cross listed section when making a enrolment?

Lets say you have an integration that handles enrolment and that the course sis id is set by the integration at creation. Later  on a teacher cross lists the section

Then a student is going to be enroled by the integration (using sis id for course and student id), the integration starts doing this:

1. Finds the course id by searching with course sis id

2. Finds all section on the course id

3. Enrol the student on section id

But because the section has been cross listed step 2 fails to return the section.

And I can not find any API methods to search for sections without having a course id.

How should the integration work to be able to continue enrolling on sections after section been cross listed?

[a_craik · Accepted solution]

Hi Ulrik

We had exactly this problem. Our solution was to give the section a sis ID too. This now happens during the scripted course creation process - the course is created as before (with a sis_course_id), but then a section is created with a sis_section_id. When the script starts pushing enrolments it aims straight at the section without reference to the course - this way it doesn't matter where that section is (i.e. if it's subsequently been cross-listed).

[ulrik_sandgren]

Thanks Adam

But as far I can see you need the section id for the enrolment and how does the integration get the section id, I can not find a API method to search for sections on sis id?

All I can find is to go thru the course id (GET /api/v1/courses/:course_id/sections).

[MattHanes]

Greetings  @ulrik_sandgren ,

If you create the sections with an SIS section ID when you create the courses, then you can use that to enroll users. You can enroll directly in a section using the sis_section_id without having to know the course number.

https://yourinstitution.instructure.com/api/v1/sections/sis_section_id:1234567/enrollments

That is what we do with SIS imports. We import a courses.csv file and a sections.csv with one section per course. Then our enrollments CSV will enroll everyone by the sis_section_id instead of the sis_course_id. That way cross-listing still allows for nightly updates on those sections.

Hope that helps!

[MattHanes]

Oh and the section GET is this one:

https://yourinstitution.instructure.com/api/v1/sections/1233487

Or this one if you you use SIS IDs:

https://yourinstitution.instructure.com/api/v1/sections/sis_section_id:654321