Link an outcome to a rubric via the API

[maguire]

I have created a set of outcomes using the API (thus saving a lot of copy an paste into the user interface). Now I just want to have a rubric for an assignment use a specific outcome.

If I look at an assignment that has a rubric that is based on an outcome I see:

'rubric': [{'id': '_2958',
      	    'points': 5.0,
            'description': 'Pres1',
            'long_description': '<p><strong><em>Demonstrate the ability to, in English, clearly present and discuss his or her conclusions and the knowledge and arguments on which they are based in speech and writing to different audiences.</em></strong></p>',
	     'ignore_for_scoring': False,
	     'criterion_use_range': False,
	     'ratings': [{'id': 'blank', 'points': 5.0,
                          'description': 'Exceeds Expectations', 'long_description': ''},
                         {'id': '_3187', 'points': 3.0,
                          'description': 'Meets Expectations', 'long_description': ''},
			 {'id': 'blank_2', 'points': 0.0,
                          'description': 'Does Not Meet Expectations',
                          'long_description': ''}
                         ],
             'outcome_id': 1081,
             'vendor_guid': None}],
'rubric_settings': {'id': 932,
	            'title': 'Presentation rubric',
		    'points_possible': 5.0,
	            'free_form_criterion_comments': False},‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

However, I do not understand how to pass the outcome_id into the rubric. For example, the following payload is used

    payload={'rubric': {'title': name,
                        'description': description,
                        'free_form_criterion_comments': 'false'},
             'rubric_association_id': outcome_id,
             'rubric_association': {
                                    'association_type': 'Assignment',
                                    'association_id': assignment_id,
                                    'purpose': 'grading'}
    }

    r = requests.post(url, headers = header, json=payload)‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

The result of creating the rubric is:
{"rubric":{"id":935,"user_id":29,"rubric_id":null,"context_id":12682,"context_type":"Course","data":[],"points_possible":null,"title":"Presentation outcome","description":null,"created_at":"2019-02-10T18:37:11Z","updated_at":"2019-02-10T18:37:11Z","reusable":false,"public":false,"read_only":false,"association_count":1,"free_form_criterion_comments":false,"context_code":"course_12682","migration_id":null,"hide_score_total":null,"workflow_state":"active","criteria":[],"permissions":{"read":true,"create":true,"delete_associations":true,"update":true,"delete":true}},"rubric_association":{"id":1618,"rubric_id":935,"association_id":85644,"association_type":"Assignment","use_for_grading":false,"created_at":"2019-02-10T18:37:11Z","updated_at":"2019-02-10T18:37:11Z","title":"Presentationsseminarium/Presentation seminar","summary_data":null,"purpose":"grading","url":null,"context_id":12682,"context_type":"Course","hide_score_total":null,"bookmarked":true,"context_code":"course_12682","hide_points":false,"hide_outcome_results":false,"assessment_requests":[],"permissions":{"update":true,"delete":true,"manage":true,"submit":false,"view_rubric_assessments":true},"skip_updating_points_possible":false}}

It makes an outcome, but there is no outcome_id. Thus it appears that my attempt to pass the outcome_id in via the rubric_association_id is not correct. The documentation is rather incomplete for this API, as it says "The id of the object with which this rubric is associated" for both the rubric_association_id and rubric_association[association_id].

So how does one pass in the outcome_id via an API?

I note that  @James  when he imports rubrics from a spreadsheet (Importing Rubrics from a Spreadsheet ) use TamperMokey to pass in the outcome_id via "learning_outcome_id" in the form and a similar approach is used spec/controllers/rubrics_controller_spec.rb.

[James]

Chip,

My code doesn't use the API, it uses an internal call that I mimicked what Canvas was sending. There is a create a rubric API call that looks like it's been there for a while, but I can't imagine I completely missed that when I was doing rubric stuff earlier. Looking at the code, it looks like it might have been there for 8 years, but just got documented 2 years ago (May 11, 2017). That makes me feel better since I wrote the Rubric importer in February 2017. Whew! Thought I was losing my mind there.

Here is my understanding. Remember that I looked at the internal call, not the API one, but hopefully it's similar.

The outcome is not associated with the rubric. It is associated with one of the criterion within a rubric. rubric_association and rubric_association_id would be for the entire rubric. Moreover, the rubric_association tells what the rubric_association_id applies to. The rubric_association is a string, not an object like you have, and may be Assignment, Course, or Account. That means that rubric_association_id is either an assignment_id, course_id, or account_id, but never a rubric_id or outcome_id.

The learning outcome would need to be under rubric[criteria]. It's an indexed hash of RubricCriteria objects, but it's not explained on the Rubrics API page what those are. They are explained on the Assignments API page near the top, where you can see that there is a learning_outcome_id.

One thing you have to watch out for with Canvas is that the documentation often reflects what gets returned by the API, which may or may not match what needs sent to the API with a POST or PUT. In other words, it may not work exactly as described (or not described).

[maguire]

 @James  - you are correct that the place to look is the criteria.

The documentation says that rubric[criteria] is a Hash and that "An indexed Hash of RubricCriteria objects where the keys are integer ids and the values are the RubricCriteria objects". These are (as you noted) described at Assignments - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation. The key to understanding this line of the documentation is that a Hash in ruby is what would be called a dictionary in python, i.e., it is a data structure with keys and values. One can see a good example of this for criteria in ./spec/factories/outcome_factory.rb. Similarly, ./lib/cc/rubrics.rb has a method add_criterion(node, criterion) that shows operations on the criterion, it include a line:

      if criterion[:learning_outcome_id].present?

So the value of the RubricCriteria learning_outcome_id is an  outcome_id.

The code that works is:

The resulting rubric in the assignment is:

[James]

Chip - Thanks for figuring this out and documenting it for us.

[maguire]

 @James  - thanks once again for your insights!