Retrieve and grade student submissions via Canvas REST API
domain: instructure.com · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Send GET /api/v1/courses/<course_id>/assignments/<assignment_id>/submissions?per_page=100 to list all submissions for an assignment
Follow the Link header to paginate through all pages of submissions
Inspect each submission object for fields such as user_id, submitted_at, workflow_state, and attachments
To post a grade, send PUT /api/v1/courses/<course_id>/assignments/<assignment_id>/submissions/<user_id> with a JSON body including submission[posted_grade]
To post grades in bulk, use POST /api/v1/courses/<course_id>/assignments/<assignment_id>/submissions/update_grades with a grade_data hash keyed by user_id
Known gotchas
Submissions are not created until a student actually submits; a 'missing' state submission object is generated automatically after the due date but may not appear for all students immediately
The posted_grade value can be a percentage string ('85%'), a points number, or a letter grade depending on the assignment's grading_type; mismatching the format silently stores 0 or errors
SpeedGrader and the API share the same grade store; a grade written via API will immediately appear in SpeedGrader and vice versa, which can cause conflicts if both are in use simultaneously
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