Filtering Variables in API Results

[lmurray2]

Is there a way to include only specific variables from an API call? 
Using Postman, the API call is:  GET courses/{courseID}/users

The returned objects include:

• id,

• name,

• created_at,

• sortable_name,

• short_name,

• sis_user_id,

• integration_id,

• sis_import_id,

• root_account,

• login_id, and

• email

If I only would like certain variables returned in the results - in this case I would like "name" and "email" - how is that done? 

[themidiman]

It would seem that the GraphQL interface would be how you would do this. I have yet to have time to play with it, but basically you supply a JSON template of sorts and then the API fills in just the parts you ask the API for. 

Here's a video with a simple example of how Postman works with Graphql

[lmurray2]

Thanks, Jeffrey. I am able to access the GraphQL environment but I'm just not sure how to make it work. Do I need to install the Canvas API schema into postman? 

[themidiman]

I don't have any experience using the tooling for GraphQL yet, unfortunately. There was a presentation made about it at the most recent InstructureCon that I heard about via the Community that gave me a little more information, but mostly just chatter on the Developer's group here. Maybe someone like  @James ‌ can hop on here and clear up the fogginess of doing this either with Postman or the in-browser GraphQL interface on your Canvas cloud instance: https://<yourinstitution>.instructure.com/graphiql 

Meanwhile I finally have some time to play with this myself. If I get it figured out, I'll post back with my findings.

[themidiman]

Success! I was able to play with my first GraphiQL interface while logged in as an admin user and found this snippet should give you what you need:

query MyQuery {
  __typename
  legacyNode(_id: "<your course id>", type: Course) {
    ... on Course {
      usersConnection(first: 10) {
        edges {
          node {
            name
            email
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

When I did this on a test course of my own this is the result in the GraphiQL as a screenshot:

So of course you will need to have your desired course id and replace mine with yours. 

This is my first experiment. I'm going to try some more programming with Postman and maybe even Python to see what practical uses I can see with this new way of getting information out of Canvas.