staadecker/canvas-student-data-export

Python script to download all of your student data from Canvas LMS.

Introduction

Forked from https://github.com/davekats/canvas-student-data-export

Major changes:

• Reorganized the project structure.
• Refactored the code to make it more Pythonic.
• Added progress bars.
• Use threading where possible.
• Save assignment attachements.
• Save all user files.

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The Canvas Student Data Export Tool can export nearly all of a student's data from Instructure Canvas Learning Management System (Canvas LMS). This is useful when you are graduating or leaving your college or university, and would like to have a backup of all the data you had in canvas. Also, some instructors disable the built-in export tool.

The tool exports all of the following data for each course:

• Assignments
• Announcements
• Discussions
• Pages
• Files
• Modules
• Single file webpage of the Canvas page for grades, assignments, announcements, discussions, and modules

Additionally, all your files stored on Canvas (such as historic submissions and attachments) will be downloaded.

TO DO LIST

• Export grades.
• Detect when the cookies and API token are not valid.
• Use argparse.
• Add an argument to prohibit overwriting existing files.
• Have the path to the Chrome binary be specified by a required argument.
• Use logging.
• Refactor download_canvas.py.
• Refactor export.py.

Install

pip install -r requirements.txt
npm install

Make sure you have Chomium or Chrome installed. Currently, the executable path is hardcoded to /usr/bin/chromium-browser in module/singlefile.py. If you are not on Linux or do not use Chromium, you will need to change the path.

Run

1. Get your Canvas API key by going to Canvas and navigating to Account > Settings > Approved Integrations > New Access Token
2. Get your Canvas User ID at https://example.instructure.com/api/v1/users/self in the id field
3. Save your cookies for your Canvas domain

Then, create the file credentials.yaml with the following content:

API_URL: [ base Canvas URL of your institution ]
API_KEY: [ API Key from Canvas ]
USER_ID: [ user ID from Canvas ]
COOKIES_PATH: [ path to cookies file ]

Make credentials.yaml is in the same directory as export.py.

Now, run the program:

python export.py

The folder ./output will be created and your data downloaded to this path.