Listing all question groups in a quiz

Question

Hi,

Many of our quizzes are set up using question groups that use questions from assessment question banks. Based on retrieving the submission data, I now want to retrieve the actual quiz question info (text, primarily).

For these quizzes, api/v1/courses/{{CourseID}}/quizzes/{{QuizID}}/questions/ returns nothing. A call to api/v1/courses/{{CourseID}}/quizzes/{{QuizID}}/groups/ results in a 404.

Is there an API call to retrieve all the quiz question groups in a quiz?

James · Accepted Answer

@saelterman , Is there an API call to retrieve all the quiz question groups in a quiz? You can get all of the quiz question group IDs, which isn't the same as the questions themselves. I did some more looking into Question Banks tonight in an effort to figure out how to get the information out. A lot of this isn't necessary to answer the question about where to get the quiz question groups, but I wanted to include it since we had been talking about it in another place. For this example, I'm using these values. * course_id = 896851 * quiz_id = 5556241 * assignment_id = 22540501 * quiz_submission_id = 34201810 * user_id = 3346297 (this is fake user for testing) You can obtain all of the values in a question bank, but not through the API. There is an internal AJAX call that will return the information. Go to Quizzes and choose Manage Question Banks and pick the bank that you want to use. Look at the pathname in the browser. Let's say it's /courses/896851/question_banks/4145586. What you want to do is append a /questions to the end so it looks like /courses/896851/question_banks/4145586/questions. By default, it returns 50 items at a time, although it supports the per_page query parameter, which supports up to 100 at a time. If you're making the call from within the browser, you'll be presented with a while(1); at the beginning. If you strip that off, you'll have the JSON of the questions in the bank. There are two properties. * "pages" tells you the number of pages you'll need to get all the questions. You can iterate through the questions with the query parameter page. * "questions" contains the actual questions. Here's the non-API call I made (I did the per_page=1 just to get 1 question). GET /courses/896851/question_banks/4145586/questions?per_page=1‍ Here's what it looks like. {
"pages":4,
"questions":[
{
"assessment_question":{
"id":147490845,
"name":"Q1a",
"question_data":{
"answers":[
{
"weight":100,
"id":52247,
"migration_id":"QUE_1005_A1",
"text":"No answer text provided.",
"html":"\u003cimg class="equation_image" title="x=2" src="/equation_images/x%3D2" alt="x=2"\u003e"
},
{
"weight":0,
"id":41690,
"migration_id":"QUE_1006_A2",
"text":"No answer text provided.",
"html":"\u003cimg class="equation_image" title="x=3" src="/equation_images/x%3D3" alt="x=3"\u003e"
},
{
"weight":0,
"id":17612,
"migration_id":"QUE_1007_A3",
"text":"No answer text provided.",
"html":"\u003cimg class="equation_image" title="x=-2" src="/equation_images/x%3D-2" alt="x=-2"\u003e"
},
{
"weight":0,
"id":42206,
"migration_id":"QUE_1008_A4",
"text":"No answer text provided.",
"html":"\u003cimg class="equation_image" title="x=-1" src="/equation_images/x%3D-1" alt="x=-1"\u003e"
}
],
"correct_comments":"",
"incorrect_comments":"",
"question_text":"Where does the graph of the rational function \u003cimg class="equation_image" title="f(x)=\frac{(x-2)(x-3)^2}{(x+2)(x+1)^2}" src="/equation_images/f%28x%29%3D%5Cfrac%7B%28x-2%29%28x-3%29%5E2%7D%7B%28x%2B2%29%28x%2B1%29%5E2%7D" alt="f(x)=\frac{(x-2)(x-3)^2}{(x+2)(x+1)^2}"\u003e cross the x-axis?",
"question_name":"Q1a",
"migration_id":"910600_QUE_1003",
"points_possible":1.0,
"question_type":"multiple_choice_question",
"question_bank_name":"equationtest",
"is_quiz_question_bank":true,
"prepped_for_import":true
},
"context_id":896851,
"context_type":"Course",
"workflow_state":"active",
"created_at":"2017-01-31T21:07:14Z",
"updated_at":"2017-01-31T21:07:14Z",
"assessment_question_bank_id":4145586,
"deleted_at":null,
"migration_id":"910600_QUE_1003",
"position":null
}
}
]
}‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ For each question, the assessment_question_bank_id (4145586) is the question bank ID. We will need the assessment_question.id (147490845) later to identify the question. What is not there is the quiz_question.id that was used in the quiz. This is a bank and may be used in multiple quizzes. So, let's go to an actual quiz that was completed. I needed to find the submission information for a quiz, so I went to the Get all quiz submissions endpoint of the Quiz Submissions API. This call was GET /api/v1/courses/896851/quizzes/5556241/submissions‍ and it returned this information (the user_id=3346297 is a fake user account used for testing) {
"quiz_submissions":[
{
"id":34201810,
"quiz_id":5556241,
"quiz_version":3,
"user_id":3346297,
"submission_id":266093043,
"score":0.0,
"kept_score":0.0,
"started_at":"2019-06-07T01:22:47Z",
"end_at":null,
"finished_at":"2019-06-07T01:23:10Z",
"attempt":1,
"workflow_state":"complete",
"fudge_points":null,
"quiz_points_possible":4,
"extra_attempts":null,
"extra_time":null,
"manually_unlocked":null,
"validation_token":"... redacted ...",
"score_before_regrade":null,
"has_seen_results":false,
"time_spent":22,
"attempts_left":0,
"overdue_and_needs_submission":false,
"excused?":false,
"html_url":"https://richland.instructure.com/courses/896851/quizzes/5556241/submissions/34201810",
"result_url":"https://richland.instructure.com/courses/896851/quizzes/5556241/history?quiz_submission_id=34201810\u0026version=1"
}
]
}‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ There I found the quiz_submission array and the first item has an id=34201810. That becomes my quiz_submission_id. Now let's use the Get all quiz submission questions endpoint of the Quiz Submission Questions API. We need the quiz_submission_id, which is 34201810. GET /api/v1/quiz_submissions/34201810/questions‍ This returns an array with 4 items in it. The first two items were from a question bank, but were included in a question group by using the "Find questions" option. The last two questions were from the question bank I'm showing here, but were linked to the question bank. I've removed the question text just to shorten up the size of this JSON. {
"quiz_submission_questions":[
{
"id":99130504,
"quiz_id":5556241,
"quiz_group_id":2834622,
"assessment_question_id":56267656,
"position":1,
"question_name":"Question 1",
"question_type":"numerical_question",
"question_text":"... redacted for brevity ...",
"variables":null,
"formulas":null,
"answer_tolerance":null,
"formula_decimal_places":null,
"matches":null,
"flagged":false,
"correct":false
},
{
"id":99130508,
"quiz_id":5556241,
"quiz_group_id":2834622,
"assessment_question_id":56267660,
"position":2,
"question_name":"Question 2",
"question_type":"numerical_question",
"question_text":"... redacted for brevity ...",
"variables":null,
"formulas":null,
"answer_tolerance":null,
"formula_decimal_places":null,
"matches":null,
"flagged":false,
"correct":false
},
{
"id":99130524,
"quiz_id":5556241,
"quiz_group_id":2834623,
"assessment_question_id":147490845,
"position":4,
"question_name":"Question 4",
"question_type":"multiple_choice_question",
"question_text":"... redacted for brevity ...",
"answers":[
{
"id":52247,
"text":"No answer text provided.",
"html":"\u003cimg class="equation_image" title="x=2" src="https://richland.instructure.com/equation_images/x%3D2" alt="x=2" x-canvaslms-safe-mathml='\u0026lt;math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mi\u0026gt;x\u0026lt;/mi\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mo\u0026gt;=\u0026lt;/mo\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mn\u0026gt;2\u0026lt;/mn\u0026gt; \u0026lt;/math\u0026gt;'\u003e"
},
{
"id":41690,
"text":"No answer text provided.",
"html":"\u003cimg class="equation_image" title="x=3" src="https://richland.instructure.com/equation_images/x%3D3" alt="x=3" x-canvaslms-safe-mathml='\u0026lt;math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mi\u0026gt;x\u0026lt;/mi\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mo\u0026gt;=\u0026lt;/mo\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mn\u0026gt;3\u0026lt;/mn\u0026gt; \u0026lt;/math\u0026gt;'\u003e"
},
{
"id":17612,
"text":"No answer text provided.",
"html":"\u003cimg class="equation_image" title="x=-2" src="https://richland.instructure.com/equation_images/x%3D-2" alt="x=-2" x-canvaslms-safe-mathml='\u0026lt;math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mi\u0026gt;x\u0026lt;/mi\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mo\u0026gt;=\u0026lt;/mo\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mo\u0026gt;\u0026amp;#x2212;\u003c!-- − --\u003e\u0026lt;/mo\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mn\u0026gt;2\u0026lt;/mn\u0026gt; \u0026lt;/math\u0026gt;'\u003e"
},
{
"id":42206,
"text":"No answer text provided.",
"html":"\u003cimg class="equation_image" title="x=-1" src="https://richland.instructure.com/equation_images/x%3D-1" alt="x=-1" x-canvaslms-safe-mathml='\u0026lt;math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mi\u0026gt;x\u0026lt;/mi\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mo\u0026gt;=\u0026lt;/mo\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mo\u0026gt;\u0026amp;#x2212;\u003c!-- − --\u003e\u0026lt;/mo\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mn\u0026gt;1\u0026lt;/mn\u0026gt; \u0026lt;/math\u0026gt;'\u003e"
}
],
"variables":null,
"formulas":null,
"answer_tolerance":null,
"formula_decimal_places":null,
"matches":null,
"flagged":false,
"correct":false
},
{
"id":99130525,
"quiz_id":5556241,
"quiz_group_id":2834623,
"assessment_question_id":147490846,
"position":3,
"question_name":"Question 3",
"question_type":"multiple_choice_question",
"question_text":"... redacted for brevity ...",
"answers":[
{
"id":81939,
"text":"No answer text provided.",
"html":"\u003cimg class="equation_image" title="x=2" src="https://richland.instructure.com/equation_images/x%3D2" alt="x=2" x-canvaslms-safe-mathml='\u0026lt;math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mi\u0026gt;x\u0026lt;/mi\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mo\u0026gt;=\u0026lt;/mo\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mn\u0026gt;2\u0026lt;/mn\u0026gt; \u0026lt;/math\u0026gt;'\u003e"
},
{
"id":166,
"text":"No answer text provided.",
"html":"\u003cimg class="equation_image" title="x=3" src="https://richland.instructure.com/equation_images/x%3D3" alt="x=3" x-canvaslms-safe-mathml='\u0026lt;math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mi\u0026gt;x\u0026lt;/mi\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mo\u0026gt;=\u0026lt;/mo\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mn\u0026gt;3\u0026lt;/mn\u0026gt; \u0026lt;/math\u0026gt;'\u003e"
},
{
"id":33183,
"text":"No answer text provided.",
"html":"\u003cimg class="equation_image" title="x=-2" src="https://richland.instructure.com/equation_images/x%3D-2" alt="x=-2" x-canvaslms-safe-mathml='\u0026lt;math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mi\u0026gt;x\u0026lt;/mi\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mo\u0026gt;=\u0026lt;/mo\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mo\u0026gt;\u0026amp;#x2212;\u003c!-- − --\u003e\u0026lt;/mo\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mn\u0026gt;2\u0026lt;/mn\u0026gt; \u0026lt;/math\u0026gt;'\u003e"
},
{
"id":47507,
"text":"No answer text provided.",
"html":"\u003cimg class="equation_image" title="x=-1" src="https://richland.instructure.com/equation_images/x%3D-1" alt="x=-1" x-canvaslms-safe-mathml='\u0026lt;math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mi\u0026gt;x\u0026lt;/mi\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mo\u0026gt;=\u0026lt;/mo\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mo\u0026gt;\u0026amp;#x2212;\u003c!-- − --\u003e\u0026lt;/mo\u0026gt; \u0026lt;mn\u0026gt;1\u0026lt;/mn\u0026gt; \u0026lt;/math\u0026gt;'\u003e"
}
],
"variables":null,
"formulas":null,
"answer_tolerance":null,
"formula_decimal_places":null,
"matches":null,
"flagged":false,
"correct":false
}
]
}‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ Notice the third question (starting in line 38) has an assessment_question_id of 147490845, which matches the one that we had when we obtained the question bank through the non-API call. Also notice the presence of quiz_group_id in lines 6, 22, 40, and 79. The first two questions (included from the bank) were from quiz question group 2834622 and the last two (linked to the bank) were from quiz question group 2834623. Those are the two question groups that were used in the quiz. Now you're thinking ... OK, I want to use the Get a single quiz group endpoint of the Quiz Questions Group API. That is mostly not-helpful. Here is the call to get the first group GET /api/v1/courses/896851/quizzes/5556241/groups/2834622‍ And here is the first group. I learn from the name that it was obtained using the "Find Questions" approach and that it is position=1 or the first question group. {
"id":2834622,
"quiz_id":5556241,
"name":"Find Questions",
"pick_count":2,
"question_points":1.0,
"position":1,
"assessment_question_bank_id":null
}‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ The second call was made to GET /api/v1/courses/896851/quizzes/5556241/groups/2834623‍ and here is what it returned. {
"id":2834623,
"quiz_id":5556241,
"name":"Linked Questions",
"pick_count":2,
"question_points":1.0,
"position":2,
"assessment_question_bank_id":4145586
}‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ From this, I know that it was "Linked Questions", it's in position=2 (second question group) and the assessment_question_bank_id=4145586, which I already knew because I created the quiz, but if you were trying to get the information after the fact, this would tell you which question bank the questions came from. Remember that it takes a non-API question to get the full contents of the bank. Note that this quiz only had the two question groups. If there are questions not inside a question group, then things may get a little trickier and you'll have to look at the position within the questions as well as the position of the groups. I don't have an example here, it would probably only muddy an already long message, but I remember looking at this in the past. At some point, you're going to say "I don't want the quiz questions that one student took, I want all of them that were available." You probably think that the List questions in a quiz or a submission endpoint from the Quiz Questions API would answer that. Well, it does for the "Find Questions" questions. It returns all of the questions that are in the question group. GET /api/v1/courses/896851/quizzes/5556241/questions?per_page=100‍ Gives me the 24 questions that I copied into the quiz, but none of the questions that were linked to a question bank. Ahh, but I have the question IDs now, at least for this one student. That sounds promising. Let's try the Get a single quiz question endpoint of the Quiz Questions API. The quiz question IDs are 99130504, 99130508, 99130524, and 99130525. For the first two questions, which were obtained using "Find Questions," I get results. GET /api/v1/courses/896851/quizzes/5556241/questions/99130504
GET /api/v1/courses/896851/quizzes/5556241/questions/99130508‍‍ These calls give me something like this: {
"id":99130504,
"quiz_id":5556241,
"quiz_group_id":2834622,
"assessment_question_id":56267656,
"position":6,
"question_name":"Left Area 06",
"question_type":"numerical_question",
"question_text":"Temperatures in Decatur in June follow a normal model with a mean of 73.7 degrees and a standard deviation of 5.9 degrees. An innovative school has decided that the coolest 3.9% of days will constitute a weather emergency where students will be unable to study and classes will be cancelled. How cold must the temperature be to cancel school?",
"points_possible":1,
"correct_comments":"",
"incorrect_comments":"",
"neutral_comments":null,
"correct_comments_html":null,
"incorrect_comments_html":null,
"neutral_comments_html":null,
"answers":[
{
"weight":100,
"id":7112,
"text":"answer_text",
"numerical_answer_type":"exact_answer",
"exact":63.30177924
}
],
"variables":null,
"formulas":null,
"answer_tolerance":null,
"formula_decimal_places":null,
"matches":null,
"matching_answer_incorrect_matches":null
}‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ But now l try those that were linked to a question bank. GET /api/v1/courses/896851/quizzes/5556241/questions/99130524
GET /api/v1/courses/896851/quizzes/5556241/questions/99130525‍‍ Instead of getting the questions, I get a 404 Not Found error. {
"errors":[
{
"message":"The specified resource does not exist."
}
]
}‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ What that suggests is that the only way through the API to get the question bank questions is to fetch the Quiz Submission Questions for every user. Now, some will most likely be duplicated, so you may not need to obtain all of them. However, this won't give you every question in the bank, it will only give you the questions that were administered to students and it can only be done after the quiz has been taken. If you want all of them, you need that non-API call mentioned earlier. None of this contains the student answers, just the questions that the students received. If you want the student responses, you need to look at the List assignment submissions or List submissions for multiple assignments endpoints of the Submissions API and be sure to add the query parameter include[]=submission_history. But I don't have the assignment_id needed to make this call. I'm going to use the Get a single quiz endpoint of the Quizzes API to find this out. GET /api/v1/courses/896851/quizzes/5556241‍ There is too much information to show, so I've trimmed a bunch of it out. {
"id":5556241,
"title":"Normal Probabilities Bank",
"quiz_type":"assignment",
"assignment_id":22540501,
"question_types":[
"numerical_question"
]
}‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ Here we get the assignment_id=22540501 and also learn that it only has numerical_question question types in the quiz. Except that last statement is incorrect. There were numerical_question and multiple_choice question types in the quiz. But the multiple_choice question types were linked to a question bank and so they're not actually inside the quiz. There's no easy way for Canvas to know what type of questions will be administered ahead of time since the questions are pulled from the question bank when the quiz is delivered. Now I'm going to use the submissions API to get the submission data. I would normally use the multiple version, but I only have a single assignment here. It gives me all submissions, even those not attempted. With the multiple submission version, I can specify the student. I'll show both API calls. GET /api/v1/courses/896851/assignments/22540501/submissions?include[]=submission_history
GET /api/v1/courses/896851/students/submissions?student_ids[]=3346297&assignment_ids[]=22540501&include[]=submission_history
‍‍‍‍‍ Here is the information returned. [