Add a lms_user_id

[sigurdurb]

Hi,

I want to add an optional lms_user_id variable to the students in the nbgrader db. So Teachers and TA's can easily send grades using their api keys to Canvas LMS.

For context CanvasLMS has a user_id that is always a random number.

This change is for 3 important reasons:

1. user_id is the only parameter which by submissions can be updated in Canvas: Important aspect(see https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/submissions.html#method.submissions_api.update)
2. Canvas Teachers/TA’s Roles(permissions) don't have access to the login_id (That is currently the name of our students home folders) , but their Roles have permission to view the user_id’s.
3. Current id we are using to map the Canvas user to the nbgrader user is with the canvas login_id, seeing the login_id is only a feature of an extended role my user has in Canvas but the teachers/ta's don't. But I would like the teachers/ta's to be able to send the grades themselves/with their apikey.

The other possiblity is having the nbgrader student.id as the Canvas user_id but currently we are using is the Canvas login_id because it is the same as the homefolders of the students and files under the srv/nbgrader/exchange or in the course file structure: <course_id>/submitted/<student_id>. The user_id in Canvas is also not visible in the Canvas lms so if something comes up finding a students folder would be hard for a teacher but only in the formgrader they would have their full names but not in the folder structure.

Would this be a desired addition or should I just keep this update on my repo?
I am curious if this would be helpful for other LMS system users?

Edit:
For context the Canvas login_id is usually a slugified short version of the name + the year student started for example "alexander17". I am also wondering how this would work when a student submits an assignment through the Assignment list, how is nbgrader getting the name of the student? If I would change the nbgrader student.id to be a Canvas user_id(a unique random number) would I also have to change the students login on the server to that number ?

[perllaghu]

I was looking at this for the exchange-service I'm writing.

If the extra column has a suitable vague name, it can be used to match any external UID to the jupyterhub-specific UID.

[jhamrick]

Closed by #1036