Canvas API POST quiz question not working

[ts1994]

I've been attempting to create quizzes via the canvas api, but am running into issue (exacerbated by the less-than-ideal error handling by the canvas api).

I'm able to create a quiz, but when trying to create a quiz question, I've run into the following two errors:

- A 500 error with no detail on the payload issue

- A 200, but none of the parameters I'm passing are used and I'm left with a blank quiz question

Here is a sample request:

r = requests.post(
url + '/v1/courses/' + str(course_id) + '/quizzes/' + str(quiz_id) + '/questions',
headers = auth,
json = question
)

where...

question = {
"question[question_name]" : "Question 1",
"question[question_text]" : "This is a question, pick an answer",
"question[question_type]" : "multiple_choice_question",
"question[points_possible]" : 1,
"question[answers]" : [
{
"answer_text" : "It worked!",
"answer_weight" : 100
},
{
"answer_text" : "This did not work",
"answer_weight" : 0
}
]
}

Here is the response I get:

200
{
  "id": 160769,
  "quiz_id": 48977,
  "quiz_group_id": null,
  "assessment_question_id": null,
  "position": null,
  "question_name": "Question",
  "question_type": "text_only_question",
  "question_text": "Question text",
  "points_possible": 0,
  "correct_comments": "",
  "incorrect_comments": "",
  "neutral_comments": "",
  "correct_comments_html": "",
  "incorrect_comments_html": "",
  "neutral_comments_html": "",
  "answers": [],
  "variables": null,
  "formulas": null,
  "answer_tolerance": null,
  "formula_decimal_places": null,
  "matches": null,
  "matching_answer_incorrect_matches": null,
  "assessment_question": null
}

Any help here would be appreciated.

[igustafson]

Hello @ts1994 ,

Thank you for contacting us. I looked over this and it would be est to look over the create quiz API here to make sure you have the correct lines included https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/quizzes.html#method.quizzes/quizzes_api.create

[YoungsuKim]

I have the same issue. Passing data in JSON format does not produce an error, but it creates a generic quiz, as you added in your post. 

I have a partial answer with urlencode. The tricky part is passing [answers], which is a list of dictionaries. On https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/, they describe how to pass a list, but there is no discussion when the entries of a list are dictionaries. 

Would you try the following? 

question = "question[question_name]=Question 1&question[question_text]=This is a question, pick an answer&question[question_type]=multiple_choice_question&question[points_possible]=1&question[answers][][answer_text]=It worked!&question[answers][][answer_weight]=100&question[answers][][answer_text]=This did not work"

r = requests.post(
url + '/v1/courses/' + str(course_id) + '/quizzes/' + str(quiz_id) + '/questions',
headers = auth,
data = question
)

json is changed to data. Your headers should not have content-type json. Here is the response I received.

[{'id': 1925282,
'quiz_id': 108665,
'quiz_group_id': None,
'assessment_question_id': 2662408,
'position': None,
'question_name': 'Question 1',
'question_type': 'multiple_choice_question',
'question_text': 'This is a question, pick an answer',
'points_possible': 1.0,
'correct_comments': '',
'incorrect_comments': '',
'neutral_comments': '',
'correct_comments_html': '',
'incorrect_comments_html': '',
'neutral_comments_html': '',
'answers': [{'id': 6961,
'text': 'It worked!',
'html': '',
'comments': '',
'comments_html': '',
'weight': 100.0},
{'id': 6607,
'text': 'This did not work',
'html': '',
'comments': '',
'comments_html': '',
'weight': 0.0}],
'variables': None,
'formulas': None,
'answer_tolerance': None,
'formula_decimal_places': None,
'matches': None,
'matching_answer_incorrect_matches': None}]