Question bank API

[julielkz]

Hi,

I did not see an API for Question bank. 

Is it possible to know how many courses are using question bank with other APIs?

thanks

li

[mcowen · Accepted solution]

There is not a single API endpoint that I know of that allows a user to get a list of all the questions groups. 

It can be done by linking together multiple APIs

1) /api/v1/courses/course_id/quizzes/ will list all the quizzes in 1 course

2) Get the quiz id from #1 and put it in /api/v1/courses/course_id/quizzes/quiz_id/questions

The return will include all the questions in that quiz. If the question has a quiz_group_id then the question came from a question bank.

If you use Canvas Data, then it can all be found in the quiz_question_group_fact

https://portal.inshosteddata.com/docs#quiz_question_group_fact

I hope this helps!

[rainer_mueller]

I don't see a quiz_group_id being a property of a Quiz question

https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/quiz_questions.html

[Jeff_F]

@mcowen  - the original question pertains to question banks but your response provides a proposed solution for question groups, which is of course different.

Using Canvas Data I've confirmed that a Quiz Question Group Id is not the same as a Question Bank Id.

[bbennett2]

Mike's answer is correct, but I submitted a feature idea to add an API endpoint that would make this much, much simpler. An upvote would be great 🙂

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/11546 

[boyland]

I have a course without any quizzes but with a question bank.  When I use the API to get the quizzes, it says there are none (no surprise).  Is there no way to get the question banks through the REST API ?

[MarkTiderman]

Hi. Has there been any update on this? I would love to use a question bank API end point.  

Thanks!

[James]

@MarkTiderman 

Access to question banks is extremely limited and no public-facing API exists for them. It is available within the browser using a non-API route. Canvas is no longer developing Classic Quizzes, so it is unlikely that there will ever be one for Classic Quizzes.

One way to get at the information through the API is to create a quiz that inserts the questions from the question bank (do not link to them) and then you can access the questions in the quiz using the API.

You can use a browser to get at the internal routes and bypass the API. There are programs like Puppeteer that allow you to control the browser so that you can navigate to the page that contains the question banks and then automate the information that you need.

[Jeff_F]

I found this right after I sent the following to support:

---

As part of our preparations for the transition to New Quizzes (NQ) we would like to review the list of question banks currently used with classic quizzes (CQ) in our course templates (We have 1,145 Templates).   Optimally, we would be able to use this list to update the names of the question banks using the Canvas API.

This way once the CQ Question Banks are converted to NQ Item Banks we will be able to differentiate and immediately understand what course template the Item Bank belongs to.  As is, after migration all NQ Item Banks appear combined under the filters for ‘All My Banks’ and ‘All My Course Banks’.  Neither of these filters permit differentiation between the course or template the Item Bank is associated with.  Hence the request for an ability to edit the names of CQ Question Banks.  My thinking is that will help a great deal.

Is a report available that lists CQ Question Banks?  I do not see a way in Canvas Data nor the Canvas API.

Are there plans to update the Canvas API to provide CQ Question Bank name update capability?

My plan B would be to use software such as iMacros to try to help automate some of this.  But even with that approach, a list of current CQ Question Banks would be very useful.