Get List Enrollments bug/maybe maybe not?

[cschexnayder]

I recall a post where trying to get the state of an enrollment you had to use state[]=deleted....or state[]=active

When I first looked at the request parameters to List enrollments end point (

/api/v1/courses/:course_id/enrollments)

I took the state parameter to mean you could send it an array of status'.  So using RestSharp I attempted to do this but noticed that I only get the invited and active enrollment.

So me being me, before I coded I was using PostMan to test and using the below array in the body, all status' do come back in the response.  Now I know in RestSharp module you can only have one parametertype of RequestBody which I have.

My body

{"state": ["active","completed","deleted","creation_pending"]}

The other think I noticed is in postman if you don't specify content-type=application/json in the header, the api call will only get the defaults (active and invited)......so made sure this was also set in my RestSharp request.  No matter what I do to get multiple status' in the same call using restsharp, it only get the default.  Now I can pass the below and get each individual status:

{"state": ["active"]}

or

{"state": ["completed"]}

and those do work.  wondering if anyone else has seen this behavior?  If so, how to resolve?

My solution was to just loop through each status and get individually, but it's bothering me that it works in postman and not c#

Now I've used the same format on other api calls where in the canvas documentation says you "May pass in array or string." for example sis_section_id[], and it works there.  Just weird.  Anyone?

[cschexnayder]

Made a typo, individual state should read:

{"state": "active"}

or

{"state": "completed"}

[James]

 @cschexnayder ,

I don't know C#, but if you want to send JSON you need to make sure that you do both of these.

1. Include content-type: application/json as a header so that it knows you're sending a JSON string rather than query parameters for a PUT or POST. It also requires a content-length: header, which is the length of the JSON string that you're sending.
2. Convert the JSON to a string

The accept: application/json lets the server know that it's okay to send back JSON. Some API calls work without it and sometimes it requires it, so I just make sure I always send it.

You're not making a PUT or POST, you're making a GET. Canvas doesn't define what will happen if you try sending JSON with that.

Now, some libraries will accept a JavaScript object for the query parameters and convert it for you. I don't know what C# does. It is possible that Postman does (I don't use it, I use Advanced Rest Client and it won't let me put in JSON for a GET request)

I looked through a couple of libraries I had written to call Canvas API (google sheets and PHP) and I only use JSON for a PUT and POST. I'm pretty sure I tried it at one time with the GET but it didn't work.

If you wanted to use HTML form encoding and send query parameters, you can specify items with a [] in the more than once so that you don't have to iterate over each type. For example:

state[]=active&state[]=completed&state[]=deleted

[cschexnayder]

James,

Thanks for the insight.

After looking around and doing some test, I found the below on the restsharp github documents. So I also tried what they suggested with AddJsonBody and forcing content-type, but that didn’t work either. I’ve reverted to using your suggestion with the repetitive parameter state[]=...&state[]=…. In the URL And that did work.

I can only conclude that with postman, it’s doing something different with the request.

Thanks….

RequestBody

If this parameter is set, its value will be sent as the body of the request. Only one RequestBody parameter is accepted - the first one.

The name of the parameter will be used as the Content-Type header for the request.

RequestBody does not work on GET or HEAD Requests, as they do not actually send a body.

If you have GetOrPost parameters as well, they will overwrite the RequestBody - RestSharp will not combine them but it will instead throw the RequestBody parameter away.

It is recommended to use AddJsonBody or AddXmlBody methods instead of AddParameter with type BodyParameter. Those methods will set the proper request type and do the serialization work for you.