Canvas API - Attempting to get Analytics for Assignments as Student

Hi! I am a student messing around with the canvas API using React and seeing all the different things I can access from my classes. I wanted to be able to get the grades and statistics for each of the assignments in my courses, but have been running into "user not authorized to perform that action" errors. I was wondering if there is a workaround to this, or if I am doing something wrong in my code.

Note: I have been using my personal API key to access this information, but have replaced in the code below for privacy. One image is of my server.js file, another is of my main React component. Thank you in advance for any help!

Screenshot 2024-02-22 at 9.24.39 PM.png

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Accepted answers

sendres

Hi @AtticusMcNulty,

First of all, kudos to you for your experimentation! It's great to see students hacking in the benevolent sense of the term, meaning to learn the capabilities of a system and leverage that knowledge for innovative, unexpected, and beneficial purposes.

The Canvas API will allow the same actions that are available to you through the web interface, and likewise block actions that are not allowed to you through the web interface. The fact that you are getting the "user not authorized" message is evidence of this, and actually means that your code is working.

Out of the box, Canvas has default permissions for each of its five pre-installed roles. These settings are managed by the Canvas administrator for your institution, who may have made some changes from these defaults. (But probably not by much, since the defaults are quite reasonable.)

You'll note that the ability of students to view analytics is turned off by default. This is likely so that, in a small class, you can't determine other students' grades. For instance, if you're in a class of only two students, it would be simple for you to use your analytics view to figure out how your classmate scored on their assignments.

Here are some fun things you can (probably, if you have permission) do with the API:

Pull down a roster of the people in your course. Canvas will only send you 10 enrollments by default, with a link in the response header to get the next page of users. Fetching a course roster is is a good way to understand how to handle pagination that happens in many Canvas API responses.
Use the user information to send a conversation message to a classmate. (It might be a good idea to get their permission first.)
Retrieve all the posts in a discussion and build your own web view of the thread.

Have fun and be sure to post back if you have more questions!

Steven Endres (he/him/his)
Director of Learning Technologies
Information Technology (Lewis 001A)
Dominican University | 7900 Division Street | River Forest, IL 60305
Mobile: (708) 466-9452 | sendres@dom.edu | Book a meeting with me
.................................
We are Dominican. We Go First.

All comments

sendres

Hi @AtticusMcNulty,

Here are some fun things you can (probably, if you have permission) do with the API:

Pull down a roster of the people in your course. Canvas will only send you 10 enrollments by default, with a link in the response header to get the next page of users. Fetching a course roster is is a good way to understand how to handle pagination that happens in many Canvas API responses.
Use the user information to send a conversation message to a classmate. (It might be a good idea to get their permission first.)
Retrieve all the posts in a discussion and build your own web view of the thread.

Have fun and be sure to post back if you have more questions!

AtticusMcNulty

Hi Steven,

I hope you're doing well! I have another question regarding the Canvas API. I've recently begun a new term at my university, and I've encountered an issue with some of my new classes. When attempting to retrieve the modules and assignments using the API, I'm receiving "The specified resource does not exist" errors. This is confusing to me because, when I check my actual Canvas page, these same courses indeed have assignments and modules. I know the code is not the issue as I am getting the modules and assignments of other classes just fine. Is this due to a delay in loading new modules/assignments?

Any help is appreciated and let me know if you need any more information.

Thank you in advance, Atticus

AtticusMcNulty

Thank you for the quick response! It took a little while but I found the mistake. I didn't realize up until now that "canvas.instructure.com" (as seen on the api page) should be replaced with "canvas.your_actual_school.edu". Evidently the error was a bit silly, but it is interesting that certain courses were still returning correctly (I made a full working application before realizing). Perhaps you have some insight on that?

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