Retrieving admin user last login via API

[rscrawford]

I'm working on a PHP script that will retrieve the last_login value for an admin user. Here is the endpoint that I am using:

/api/v1/accounts/1/users?search_term=$login_id&include[]=last_login

The problem is that when we execute this, we sometimes get TWO user objects. For example:

/api/v1/accounts/1/users?search_term=someone@somewhere.com&include[]=last_login

returns two admin accounts, one with the someone@somewhere.com login id, and one with a totally different login id, and the value of last_login is entirely different for each of them. Why could this be happening?

[pklove]

What is the email address and name for the one that does not have login_id someone@somewhere.com ?

[rscrawford]

Entirely different. Let's say that the first person is named Joe Smith; then the second person is Kathy O'NoName, with the email address kathy@somewhere.com.

Edit:  I just realized that person 1 and person 2 have the same email domain.

[pklove]

I just managed to reproduce this - and the users have different email domains.

Its the same if I search in the GUI as an admin in People.

I get back three, two would be expected, one has no current details that match the search.  But the odd one out is a test account that I use, and the other two are also accounts I use.  Spooky!

I wonder if the odd one out used to have something matching the others and Canvas is finding these details.  Eg., a deleted login.   Deleted things are often really still there.

[pklove]

BTW, this is a nice way to get last logins.  How did you know about the include[]=last_login?  Its not in the docs at Users - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation 

[rscrawford]

My co-worker figured it out. I don't know how, but we've used it for a couple of things.

I wonder what's going on with this behavior. I haven't found anything online to suggest a way around it.

[pklove]

Oh well, for now, just have to allow for multiple results and grab the one that actually matches.  Should probably be doing this anyway as you don't know what will come back.

[rscrawford]

Here's a strange nuance... I tried searching by id, but when include[] is specified, then the search parameter will only accept string input. So I tried searching by id, but without the include[]=last_login parameter. However, it still returned two results for the user in question, which is really starting to irk me.

[Robbie_Grant]

 @rscrawford ,

Were you able to find an answer to your question? I am going to go ahead and mark this question as answered because there hasn't been any more activity in a while so I assume that you have the information that you need. If you still have a question about this or if you have information that you would like to share with the community, by all means, please do come back and leave a comment.  Also, if this question has been answered by one of the previous replies, please feel free to mark that answer as correct.

Robbie