rcanvas is a bouquet of functions to query your institution’s instance of the Canvas LMS.
Installation
rcanvas is not on CRAN, but can be installed via:
devtools::install_github("daranzolin/rcanvas")
library(rcanvas)Setup
Some prep work is required before use. You must first stash two items in your .Renviron file: (1) your third-party access token, available through your Canvas LMS account settings; and (2) your institution’s particular domain. (e.g. "https://<your_domain>.instructure.com/") Name your token CANVAS_API_TOKEN, and your domain CANVAS_DOMAIN. For help on setting up your .Renviron (and all things R) see Jenny Bryan’s Stat545 page.
The process for getting your Canvas API token:
Canvas -> Account -> Settings -> Approved Integrations -> Add new token
We provide two helper functions to make this process easier.
set_canvas_token("YOUR_TOKEN_HERE")
set_canvas_domain("https://canvas.yourdomain.edu")Usage
Each function returns a data frame with various information.
Course Data
###Get all courses:
get_course_list()
get_course_list(include = c("teachers", "total_students"))
###Get course analytics data:
get_course_analytics_data(course_id = 20, type = "activity")
###Get course items:
get_course_items(course_id = 20, item = "users", include = "email")User Data
get_user_items(user_id = 365, item = "details")
get_user_items(365, "missing_submissions")Gradebooks
This function is fickle, but special thanks to Garth Egbert for the inspiration.
get_course_gradebook(course_id = 20)Submissions
Submissions are available for both quizzes and assignments, e.g.:
get_submissions(course_id = 27, type = "assignments", type_id = 2248)
get_submissions(27, "quizzes", 168)You can also comment on assignments or assign them scores programatically.
comment_submission(course_id = 27, assignment_id = 2248,
user_id = 4227, comm = "Test comment!")
grade_submission(course_id = 27, assignment_id = 2248,
user_id = 4227, grade = 95)Groups
Students can belong to groups, which belong to a particular course object. The functions in groups.R deal with listing the users and groups in each course.
get_course_user_groups(course_id = 27)Announcements and Discussions
Additionally, we have some functions that will collect the announcements or discussions from a particular course.
get_announcements(course_id = 27)
get_announcements(course_id = 27, start_date = "2017-02-01") get_discussions_context(4371405, object_type = "courses")