Get Courses API

[jschaffer]

Hello all,

I am trying to find out why my API is not pulling all courses for an account.  I just created ~275 courses and I used the following API:

GET: MYCANVAS/api/v1/accounts/1/courses?enrollment_term_id=8&per_page=500

and I get a list of about 100 of the courses but I know there is more.  I even searched manually via the URL code for courses and I know they exist in this account.  Any idea what I may be doing wrong?  I searched on the API site and could not find anything useful. 

Jason

[MattHanes]

I believe the maximum return value for per page is 100. You'll have to include some pagination code in your GET script to return the rest of them:

Pagination - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation

[jschaffer]

 @MattHanes ,

This makes sense, but I am an admitted API novice.  Would I have to run separate APIs for each page?

[MattHanes · Accepted solution]

That is correct. You run a get call for each page that is returned by the Link header until the Link header tells you that you are on the last page. In python, it looks something like this:

url = MYCANVAS/api/v1/accounts/1/courses?enrollment_term_id=8&per_page=100
r = requests.get(url, headers = header, data = payload)
j = json.loads(r.text)
# insert stuff to do with object j here.
while r.links['current']['url'] != r.links['last']['url']:  
  r = requests.get(r.links['next']['url'], headers=header)  
  j = json.loads(r.text)
  # do more stuff with the new object j

[jschaffer]

Very cool.  This looks like it uses Requests in Python right?  It is not Python 3?

[MattHanes]

That is correct. You can find numerous examples of how to use it here:

GitHub - kajigga/canvas-contrib:

[jschaffer]

Unfortunately I am using Python 3 and having issues updating the code.  Do you have any suggestions on conversion?  I tried the 2to3 module but it doesnt seem to take. 

[MattHanes]

I don't have any suggestions unfortunately, I'm using Python 2.7 on a Windows machine. I only learned enough Python to do some basic API stuff. I'm not actually a programmer.

[jschaffer]

Me either.  I found it one of the more straightforward languages.  It is quick and useful.  Thanks for all the insight though.