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Why is the Assignment 'due_at' value that of the last override?

Question asked by James Lane on May 28, 2019
Latest reply on Jun 5, 2019 by James Jones

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My problem: I am requesting an Assignment Object and also the Assignment Override Objects from the API and checking if the Override Object 'due_at' date is after the Assignment Object 'due_at' (hence, inferring an extension). The 'due_at' value in the Assignment Object is always set to that of the last Override Object, I would assume that the Assignment Object 'due_at' date would be the first 'Assign' date for the assignment.

My question: Is there any logic or reasoning as to which override the Assignment Object 'due_at' field will be set to?

Thank you in advance,

James.

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James Jones May 28, 2019 8:38 PM
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James,

I was actually working on something overrides related when your message came in.

I had not noticed this before. I was working in the beta instance and didn't need the due date for the assignment, just the overrides. Strangely, in beta, the due_date is null. I went back to the production instance and found an assignment with overrides and verified what you're seeing. I have been using the due_date as the single due date for an early alert system and this is going to screw a bunch of stuff up.

I also double checked Canvas Data where the date is correct. That suggests that it is a bug. It definitely appears to be a change in the way things are handled, which should have been documented, but I don't remember seeing anything about it. It should be the date set for the "everyone else" when there is an override because that is the one entry that doesn't show up when you fetch the overrides. I'm pretty sure that when I started working on this a month ago that it was functioning correctly.

As a temporary work-around, if you use a query_parameter of all_dates=1 then you still get the wrong date for due_at, but you get a property called all_dates that has a "base" object with the correct date.

I would encourage you to file a ticket with Canvas Support and see what's going on. Please report back if you do.
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- James Lane @ James Jones on May 28, 2019 8:50 PM
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  Thanks James.
  
  I will definitely file a ticket to support and report back. I would be interested to hear more about what you are working on.
  
  For this project, I am creating an alert system for our operations team to flag 'At-Risk' students based on extensions and non-submission reports.
  
  Again, thank you for your time on this matter,
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  - James Jones @ James Lane on May 28, 2019 9:01 PM
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    I'm working on updating Show student names for Differentiated Assignments. Canvas stopped exposing the I18n internationalization and it broke the ability to discern dates since Canvas does this funky non-standard date formatting scheme that very much depends on the locale chosen. That became relevant when in some cases when there were multiple overrides.
    
    We're using a vendor's early alert system and it only uses the one due date per assignment. I custom wrote code to fetch all the information since the supplied one didn't handle the way we cross list. Adding in the all_dates=1 will force me to download additional information that I don't need.
    
    Hopefully it's a bug and Canvas will fix it, we have until next week before summer classes start.
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James Jones Jun 5, 2019 3:07 PM
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James,

I went into today to look at the actual code that I'm using to fetch the assignment dates. I'm actually using assignment_groups rather than assignments because it will return all of the assignments without pagination.

There is an override_assignment_dates parameter, which also happens to be there for the list assignments endpoint as well. It defaults to true, which means "[a]pply assignment overrides for each assignment."

Explicitly setting that to false will cause Canvas to ignore the overrides and return the actual due date of the assignment.

In the assignment object example at the top, it says this about the due date.
the due date for the assignment. returns null if not present. NOTE: If this assignment has assignment overrides, this field will be the due date as it applies to the user requesting information from the API.

I'm using a system integration account to make the API call and that user is not in any course, so why would one expect that it would get the latest date? One wouldn't.

That doesn't mean they're wrong. They didn't say what would happen if the data didn't apply to the user, but it would seem that would fall under the "Everyone else" category.

Anyway, I guess I'll be adding override_assignment_dates=false to my query.

Oh, wait, nevermind. I went in to change it and I already had it there. I borrowed my query from what Canvas was using to get the list of assignments and I copied it without fully realizing what it did. Lucky fortune on my part.

I still disagree that if the person isn't in the course that it should return the default, but that's a way around it for the time being.
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Why is the Assignment 'due_at' value that of the last override?

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