bRush is an R client to interface with the Instructure Canvas LMS.
For most functions, bRush returns a data frame. Combining bRush with a magrittr pipes makes it quick and easy to subset pesky unknown ID numbers (e.g., account -> course -> assignment) for the supplied known name.
As a client for R, bRush makes assumptions on behalf of the user that they are interested in as much data from the requests as possible. Requests are recursively processed until all results for a requests have been acheived (if there are 926 courses, bRush will make the call 93 times gathering 10 results each time, and 6 the last). Additonal, any "include" options are set to true by default.
Canvas API Documentation is available here: https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/index.html
bRush is not available on CRAN and can be installed directly from GitHub using the devtools package (which is available on CRAN).
devtools::install_github("erikpal/bRush")To use this package, create an access token in Canvas by going to Account > Settings > Approved Integrations > + New Access Token. I recommend not setting an expiration date.
Place the token in a file called .Renviron as such:
CanvasApiKey = 7~ABcD123efG45hIJ78KLMno9PQrstuVwXyZ10This method follows the best practice for developing API packages as documented here: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/httr/vignettes/api-packages.html
Alternatively, you may place the token in a text file called token.txt to be loaded from the working directory at the time needed.
You may store multiple keys for multiple servers, and override the default name of "CanvasApiKey" by passing this arugument when making requests:
env_var_name = "NameOfApiKey"The token management options are designed to give you flexibility in moving across installations. Note that keys created in production will be copied over to test and beta environments at their next scheduled copy, which makes it easier to work with a single key.
The loadURL function will load urls provided in .Renviron file as well. By default, the variables CanvasUrlTest, CanvasUrlProd, and CanvasUrlBeta shown below let you use the "test", "beta", or "production" as shortcuts for you development and production enviroments. CanvasUrlTest is the default for all functions. Any variable name can be specified, and you may also pass an actual url instead of using environment variables (e.g, server = "https://otheruniv.test.instructure.com").
library(bRush)
mycourses <- getMyCourses()
courseid <- mycourses$id[mycourses$name == "Introduction to R"]
createAssignment(courseid, "Week One Homework")library(bRush)
accounts <- getAccounts()
accountid <- accounts$id[accounts$name == "Science Department"]
stats <- getAnalytics(accountid, type = "statistics", term = 1234)library(bRush)
library(magrittr)
accountid <- getAccounts() %>% filter(name == "Science Department") %>% .[["id"]]I make use of this package to automate tasks and generate usage reports. Functions are developed as tasks present themselves. I hope that sharing this, others will find value and perhaps contribute functions for their purposes to the package.