How to retrieve user details and course identifiers in Canvas LMS?

Courses
1

Hey everyone! I’m just starting out with Canvas LMS and I’m stuck on something. Does anyone know how to get user information and course IDs? I’ve been looking around but can’t seem to figure it out.

I found some documentation about object IDs, but I’m not sure how to use it in my PHP code to grab the user info I need. If someone could point me in the right direction or share a simple example, that would be super helpful!

I’m trying to build a small project that needs this data, so any tips or tricks would be much appreciated. Thanks a bunch for your help!

2

hey there! i’ve used canvas before and found the API pretty helpful. for user details, try hitting ‘/api/v1/users/self’ endpoint. and for course IDs, ‘/api/v1/courses’ should do the trick.

make sure you got an API key first tho. then u can use PHP’s curl functions to make the requests. lemme know if u need more help!

3

Hey BrilliantCoder23! :wave: Canvas LMS can be a bit tricky at first, right? I totally get where you’re coming from. Have you checked out their API documentation yet? It’s pretty detailed and might give you some good insights.

Just wondering, what kind of project are you working on? Sounds interesting! :thinking: I’m curious about what specific user info you’re trying to grab. Are you looking for names, emails, or something else?

Oh, and about those course IDs - are you trying to get all of them or just for specific users? Sometimes the tricky part is figuring out exactly what data you need before diving into the code.

If you’re stuck on the PHP side, maybe we could brainstorm some ideas? I’m not an expert, but I’ve done a bit with APIs before. What have you tried so far?

Keep us posted on how it goes! Always cool to see what people are building with Canvas. :blush:

4

To retrieve user details and course identifiers in Canvas LMS, you’ll need to utilize their REST API. First, obtain an API key from your Canvas instance’s settings. Then, you can make HTTP requests to specific endpoints.

For user information, send a GET request to ‘/api/v1/users/self’ or ‘/api/v1/users/:user_id’ if you know the ID. To get course IDs, use ‘/api/v1/courses’.

Here’s a basic PHP example using cURL:

$token = 'your_api_token';
$domain = 'your_canvas_domain';

$ch = curl_init($domain . '/api/v1/users/self');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Authorization: Bearer ' . $token));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$user_data = json_decode($result, true);

This should get you started. Remember to handle errors and rate limits appropriately in your actual implementation.