[ARCHIVED] Need help with a PUT call to set notification preference in Canvas API that is failing (CURL & API)

[it3]

I am trying to set notification preferences in Canvas (instructure) LMS using CURL. I can get all the preferences so the User and communication channel is fine. I can put some other data but not a new notification preference. Eventually I would like to put a value for the category, but for now just trying to set one notification preference

**This command works fine - get the value of the notification preference**
curl.exe https://<myschool>.instructure.com/api/v1/users/33/communication_channels/38/notification_preferences/new_announcement -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>"

**RETURNS**
{"notification_preferences":[{"frequency":"never","notification":"new_announcement","category":"announcement"}]}

**This command works fine (example of a put via curl)**
curl.exe https://myschool.instructure.com/api/v1/courses/473/front_page -d wiki_page[body]=”something new” -X PUT -H "Authorization: Bearer token"

**This command fails - trying to put a new value for the notification preference**
curl.exe --verbose https://<myschool>.instructure.com/api/v1/users/33/communication_channels/38/notification_preferences/new_announcement -d notification_preferences[frequency]=”immediately” -X PUT -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>"

**ERROR in HTML:**
<p>
There was a problem with your last request.
You may have tried to perform an action after a long period of inactivity.
If that's the case, try going back, reloading the page you were working on, and resubmitting.
If not, please let us know what you were doing when the error happened.
</p>

**ERROR inside the CURL RESPONSE:**
HTTP/1.1 422 Unprocessable Entity

Any help is appreciated

[robotcars]

Hi @it3,

If you are not the current user, then you must Masquerade and have those privileges to set the users notification preferences.

https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/file.masquerading.html

[it3]

Thanks - however this user is myself and I am the admin.

[robotcars · Accepted solution]

It doesn't explicitly state it, but in the GET requests there is a :user_id, and in the PUT requests it's just self and only self will work, even for yourself as an admin.

curl --verbose  "https://*.instructure.com/api/v1/users/self/communication_channels/#/notification_preferences/new_announcement?notification_preferences[frequency]=immediately" -X "PUT" -H "Authorization: Bearer $token"


curl --verbose  "https://*.instructure.com/api/v1/users/self/communication_channels/#/notification_preferences/new_announcement" -d "notification_preferences[frequency]=immediately" -X "PUT" -H "Authorization: Bearer $token"

[it3]

Thanks for the help. So the bottom line is that:

You must use self in the PUT request
You must add a ?as_user_id parameter to set the preferences for another user
You must set the communication channel of that other user.

Here is what worked for me.

curl.exe https://<server>.instructure.com/api/v1/users/self/communication_channels/1643/notification_preferences/new_announcement/?as_user_id=sis_user_id:10951 -d notification_preferences[frequency]=”immediately” -X PUT -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>"

thanks again
now I just need to iterate through all the observers that I want to change the notificaiton settings for.

[robotcars]

I don't think you need ?as_user_id for yourself, but definitely for anyone else.

From what I can tell it's written to only work for the current user.

https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/blob/a706d7b47fd3bd01aeedb3c3c8957ec331ac0018/app/controll...

# self is the only possible one
https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/blob/9d7a41f5ea529d1b2af73369d5beec3efef32d6b/spec/apis/v1...

For observers, have you found the Account Provisioning Report or Canvas Data tables that would make that quicker than the API?