py_canvas_api

The idea is to have a simple, easy to understand library for the Canvas API.

The Canvas API (https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/index.html) has hundreds of endpoints.

It seemed pointless to me to write a unique method for every one of them. Instead, I created a class, called ResterAPI that uses __getattr__ to dynamically generate the path for an endpoint and __call__ to add a path element with a parameter. The Canvas class is built on top of ResterAPI.

The result is a fairly small library that can handle the vast majority of Canvas API endpoints.

Instantiate the Canvas object like this.

from canvas_api import Canvas
c = Canvas('somedomain.instructure.com', CANVAS_ACCESS_TOKEN=os.getenv('ACCESS_TOKEN'))

Building paths

You build the path appending "methods" after the instanted canvas_api object.

You will typically see a line like GET /api/v1/accounts/:account_id/courses in the Canvas API documentation. This tells you what the path is and the inline parameters it needs. You would build this path with the py_canvas_api library like this: c.accounts(8423).courses. Don't worry about the /api/v1 part.

The py_canvas_api library takes care of the path parameters like :user by taking them as method arguments. For example, here is how you would get courses in the account with the id of 10 using the path above.

# get a list of courses (paginated to 10) in the account
accounts = c.accounts('self').courses.get().json()

Common Requests

GET

To make a GET request, simply end with get(). This tells the library to make a GET request. This library uses the awesome Requests library so the return object in this case is simple a Response object. You will most often want the response as a json object. You get this by calling .json() with the Response.

# get a list of courses (paginated to 10) in the account
accounts_json = c.accounts('self').courses.get().json()

If you need to send query parameters (key-value pairs added after a question mark), add these as keyword parameters in the get() call. Let's say you want a list of your own courses where you are a teacher and the enrollment is active. You would normally need to add ?enrollment_type=teacher&enrollment_state=active to the URL to do this. With the py_canvas_api library, however, you would do it like this.

# get a list of courses (paginated to 10) in the account
accounts_json = c.courses.get(enrollment_type='teacher', enrollment_state='active').json()

Here are several more GET examples.

# list of users
users = c.accounts('self').users.get().json()

# assignments in course with canvas id 23423
assignments = c.courses(23423).assignments.get().json()

# assignments in course with sis id ENG101
assignments = c.courses('sis_course_id:ENG101').assignments.get().json()

# list communication channels for user with id 82
channels = c.users(82).communication_channels.get().json()

# list own communication channels
channels = c.users('self').communication_channels.get().json()

# Get a list of all courses in the account. This will keep pulling results as
# long as there are more pages. It uses generator functions to do this is a
# smart way.
accounts = c.accounts('self').course.get_paginated()

Special Cases

There are a few unique cases that are addressed in special classes. For example, the SIS Import API takes a file upload and needs special handling.

Here is how to do an SIS Import.

from canvas_api import SISImporter
sis_importer = SISImporter('somedomain.instructure.com', CANVAS_ACCESS_TOKEN=os.getenv('ACCESS_TOKEN'))
sis_importer.do_sis_import(filepath)