Canvas API

I want to talk a little bit about the Canvas API. This initialism stands for "application programming interface" and lets us do all kinds of really cool stuff behind the scenes in Canvas. In fact, you're able to do some things as well. First, if you want to try, I'd recommend grabbing the JSON Formatter Chrome extension. Once you login to Canvas, you can do things like get a list of your current courses. Without the formatter extension, this probably just looks like a garble of text. With the formatter, it might be slightly hard to read, but that's because we're not entirely familiar with the language being spoken (JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation) by Canvas. Another cool thing you can do is to look at the events in your activity stream in the same way. These links are called "GET requests" that retrieve information based on who is logged in to Canvas on your computer.

The reason I want to talk about the API is that there are a huge variety of "endpoints", or places we can get information from, place information in, and even use to create new things within Canvas. This interface is an extremely powerful tool that can allow LCCC to dig deeper into the data we generate, extend our capabilities with the LMS as an institution, and automate some processes that still rely on manual intervention. If you're interested in learning more, check out the Canvas API Documentation (https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/index.html). I'd recommend sticking to GET requests until you have a handle on how to use the API.

Let me know if you want to know more!
Brandon