Assign classes to subaccounts through API

[pdigiacobbe]

Hello,

We are beginning to break the Root account up into subaccounts for reporting purposes.  Our vendor that is providing the programming for the SIS states that he cannot find any documentation for assigning classes to subaccounts in the API information.  Our CSM stated that many schools do this.  Can someone direct me to some documentation that shows how to do this?

Is this the information he needs?  https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/accounts.html

[dgrobani]

In Courses - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation, you'll see this in the section "A Course object looks like:"

  // the account associated with the course
  "account_id": 81259,

Create a new course and Update a course act on the account_id aka subaccount.

[pdigiacobbe]

Our programmer asked that I respond with the following.

We use account_id in many API calls, but it is always referring to your main accounts, in your case you only have one and it’s ID is “1”:

 

 

If you look at Canvas All API Resources, they do distinguish between accounts and subaccounts:

 

 

But there are only two endpoints in Subaccounts API, create and delete subaccounts. Also, in Courses API, we list courses by account and can filter courses by subaccount, but nothing we could find about joining course to subaccount.

[James]

You only have one root account, the one for EGCC. That is what is showing up on the first two screenshots. You can have lots of subaccounts, but you would need to go to the Admin menu and click on SubAccounts to see them inside Canvas; they will not appear on the account selection screen.

A parent account (the root account is a parent account) can have subaccounts. For the most part, Canvas treats subaccounts as accounts, so all of the information about handling them is under the account API documentation. The subaccount documentation is limited to creating and deleting subaccounts because that has to do with the establishing (or delinking) of parent accounts with subaccounts. Everything else about a subaccount is treated just as an account.

If you pass Canvas an ID of a subaccount, then it acts on that subaccount. If you pass Canvas the ID of the root account, then it acts on the root account. It's all based on the ID of the (sub)account.

[James]

@pdigiacobbe 

You can use a SIS Import. The courses.csv file contains an account_id that specifies which account the course should go under. If you leave it blank, it goes to the root account, but if you specify the account_id, you can assign the SIS import to subaccount. You can also use a SIS import to move existing courses to different accounts.

[pdigiacobbe]

Thank you, James.  I am aware that I can use the csv file. However, we have 2500 sections loaded at this time for Fall and setting the csv will take some time.  I will use that alternative if the SIS integration cannot do it.

[James]

Many SIS integrations uses the SIS Imports rather than making individual API calls. In your case -- one SIS import vs 2500 API calls. You can do all of your previous courses as well with that same single SIS Import.

API and SIS Import are not mutually exclusive. You can send a SIS import through the API to automate the process. If you need real-time behavior, then using the API to create / update courses can get you that. We send our SIS imports every 20 minutes (we send just the changes instead of the whole thing) so it's not quite real-time, but it's close enough.

If your developer is looking to include account information in the API, see what Daniel ( @dgrobani ) and Peter ( @pklove ) wrote. If you're looking for a quick way to move courses around or create them with a specific subaccount in the future, then the SIS Import is beneficial.

[pklove]

Its just like @dgrobani posted.

account_id can be specified on a course add/update.

It might be helpful for your programmer if they joined community and engaged directly rather than things relaying through yourself.

They might have first been thinking along the lines "I want to tell the sub-account what courses it has".  Which you cannot do.  You have to tell the course what sub-account it belongs to.

In the courses API documentation, for an update, your programmer needs this bit:

course[account_id] integer The unique ID of the account to move the course to.