Connecting to canvas lms from R

Using mitt.uib.no from R

Last updated on Jul 27, 2020 2 min read R, rmarkdown, canvas, lms, rcanvas

I often use information from canvas (in my case this is the University of Bergen version mitt.uib.no) when I prepare assignments and tasks for my students. I use Shiny and R as tools to manage my course, so I need data in formats that can readily be processed by R. It can be a pain to export information, like student names and emails etc. from within the web-interface in canvas, so I have been looking for better ways to gain access. Canvas has an API that we can access, and David Ranzolin has made an R-package that allows us to access this API from R.

NOTE! The Package is no longer maintained, but still lives here: rcanvas, waiting for someone to maintain it further.

Setting up

Installing and loading rcanvas. Also loading tidyverse to get some useful data management functions. Since the package is hosted in github, you will need the devtools package to install it.

library(devtools)
devtools::install_github("daranzolin/rcanvas")

library(rcanvas)
library(tidyverse)

Acess token

You will have to include you access token and canvas domain to use this script. The canvas token can be generated from within mitt.uib.no, see the screenshot below for how to add the token to mitt.uib.no .

Remember to copy the token once generated, as you will not be able to access it later. The token is made available using a helper function from rcanvas. You will also need to enter the canvas domain. For mitt.uib.no, the canvas domain is https://mitt.uib.no.

set_canvas_token("YOUR TOKEN HERE") # Paste your token between the " ". 
set_canvas_domain("https:://your.domain.here")

Get all courses:

course_list <- get_course_list() # Store all mitt.uib.no courses you have access to into vector

Narrow the list down to find particular course name with it’s id:

course_list %>% as_tibble() %>% select(id, name) # Display id and name of course
course_list %>% as_tibble() %>% select(id, name) %>% knitr::kable() # Show all when there is a long list
course_list %>% select(id, name) %>% filter(str_detect(name, 'search string')) # Search for specific string in name of course

Get user details for specific course id

list_of_users <- get_course_items(course_id = numericid, item = "users", include = "email") # Get all users, but teachers are also in here
list_of_students <- get_course_items(course_id = numericid, item = "students", include = "email") # Get all students, but email is not included

teachers_with_email <- dplyr::anti_join(list_of_users, list_of_students, by = "id") # Filter out teachers only
students_with_email <- dplyr::inner_join(list_of_students, list_of_users, by = "id") # Merges email with student list. BONUS: Also drops "Teststudent" due to NA in 'sis_user_id'.

canvas mitt.uib.no

Tormod Bøe

Professor of Community Psychology

My research interests are societal psychology, and social inequalities in mental health in children and adolescents.