ClassDojoExport

A .NET 10 CLI, distributed as a dotnet global tool, for exporting your data out of ClassDojo. Commands are added incrementally under one base app, e.g. classdojo-export export-multimedia, classdojo-export export-homepage (future).

Install

dotnet tool install --global ClassDojoExport

(See "Releasing" below if it's not published yet — you can also build from source in the meantime, per "Building/testing locally".)

Usage

classdojo-export export-multimedia --student-id <student-id> --export-folder <export-folder>

Downloads every image/video attachment from a student's ClassDojo story feed into <export-folder>, laid out as:

• index.html — an offline-viewable page recreating the story feed (text, tags, photos/videos with poster thumbnails, sender/commenter avatars, and comments) so you can browse it later without ClassDojo or an internet connection. A "Show: All / Student / School" dropdown (top-right) filters between individual/portfolio posts about your child ("Student") and general class/school-wide posts ("School"). Comments are fetched with one extra request per commented-on post — only "class"-scoped posts support comments, so school-wide announcements are skipped for that step.
• photos/ — every downloaded image/video, referenced by index.html.
• metadata/post_metadata.json — one entry per post (sender, class, body text, tags, like/comment counts, timestamps, whether it's a private/individual post about your child vs. a general class/school post, and which file in photos/ each attachment was saved as).
• metadata/manifest.json — maps attachment IDs to the file they were saved as, so re-running the command later only downloads new posts.
• metadata/log.txt — timestamped run history and full error details, since the console output itself isn't saved anywhere once the terminal closes.
• metadata/media/ — sender/commenter avatar images referenced by index.html (not part of the regular attachment download).
• metadata/video_candidates.json — only created if an attachment looks like it might be a video by some heuristic (type, contentType, file extension, or an unrecognized JSON field mentioning "video") that isn't already handled. Confirmed video attachments (type: "video") download and render normally; this file exists as a safety net for any future/unusual shape.

Finding the student ID: open https://home.classdojo.com/#/story/student/{studentId} in a browser for the child you want to export — the ID in that URL is what the command expects.

Date filtering: pass --start/--end (either or both) to limit which posts are included, e.g. --start 2026-01-01 --end 2026-05-20. A bare date (no time-of-day) is inclusive on both ends — --end 2026-05-20 includes everything posted that day, not just up to midnight.

Resuming after a failure: on a large export, a single flaky connection to ClassDojo's CDN is retried automatically (a few attempts with a short backoff) before giving up on that one file. If the whole run does die partway through, metadata/manifest.json is saved after every successful download (not just at the end), so simply running the same command again picks up where it left off instead of re-downloading everything.

Authentication

The first time you run any command, a real Chromium window opens to ClassDojo's login page (installing Chromium first if needed — a one-time ~150MB download). Log in normally (this handles 2FA/captcha since it's a real browser), then switch back to the terminal and press Enter. Session cookies are cached to %AppData%\ClassDojoExport\session.json and reused on future runs until ClassDojo expires them, at which point you'll be prompted to log in again automatically.

Pass --force-login to any command to ignore the cache and log in fresh.

Building/testing locally

cd src/ClassDojoExport
dotnet pack -c Release -o ./nupkg
dotnet tool install --global --add-source ./nupkg ClassDojoExport

To pick up code changes and try them immediately, use update-and-run.cs from the repo root — a file-based C# program (dotnet run <file>.cs, no project needed) that uninstalls, rebuilds, and reinstalls the global tool, then runs it with whatever arguments you pass after --:

dotnet run update-and-run.cs -- export-multimedia --student-id <student-id> --export-folder <export-folder>

Releasing

.github/workflows/publish-nuget.yml publishes to nuget.org automatically, using Trusted Publishing (OIDC) instead of a stored API key — GitHub Actions proves its identity to nuget.org per run and gets back a 1-hour API key, so there's no long-lived secret to leak or rotate. One-time setup:

1. On nuget.org, go to your username menu → Trusted Publishing → add a policy:
   • Repository Owner: dochoffiday
   • Repository: ClassDojoExport
   • Workflow File: publish-nuget.yml (just the filename, not the .github/workflows/ path)
   • Environment: leave blank (this workflow doesn't use one)
2. In the GitHub repo, go to Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → New repository secret, name it NUGET_USER, and set it to your nuget.org username (the profile name, not your email).
3. The policy starts in a 7-day "pending" state until the first successful publish locks it to this specific repo (prevents someone else recreating a deleted repo of the same name later and hijacking the policy). If it expires unused, just restart the 7-day window from the same page.

Not seeing "Trusted Publishing" as an option on nuget.org yet? Microsoft is rolling it out gradually — fall back to a scoped API key (API Keys → Create, glob ClassDojoExport*) stored as a NUGET_API_KEY secret, and swap the workflow's push step back to --api-key ${{ secrets.NUGET_API_KEY }}.

To publish a new version, push a tag:

git tag v0.2.0
git push origin v0.2.0

The workflow packs with that version (stripping the v) and pushes to nuget.org. You can also trigger it manually from the Actions tab (workflow_dispatch) and type the version in by hand.

Notes

• The storyFeed JSON schema is inferred from community scripts, not official docs, so unrecognized fields are ignored rather than causing failures — but ClassDojo could change the shape of the response at any time.
• Nothing here is affiliated with or endorsed by ClassDojo. Use only on accounts/students you have the right to export data for.