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Boatswain

Follow the river and you will find the C.

boatswain noun a ship's officer in charge of equipment and the crew

A collection of command-line course management scripts used by Columbia CS TAs. Primarily targets interfacing with Columbia's LMS, Canvas, but over time we will also add scripts that will support interfacing with GitHub.

Getting Started

Let's install all the dependencies the right way.

Make sure you have Python3 and virtualenv installed. Clone this repo. In the repo directory, create a virtual environment with the following command:

$ python3 -m venv venv

venv could have been any path name, but we're going to assume that you used venv, and proceed. You should see a directory named venv created, and now you can activate this virtual environment whenever you want. Assuming you're using Bash:

$ . venv/bin/activate

Your shell prompt should now have (venv) in front of it. Check to make sure that your python verion is 3, not 2.

Now, you can install dependencies into this virtual environment.

(venv) $ pip3 install -r requirements.txt

This installs all the dependencies from the requirements.txt file. Note that you should not need to do any of this as sudo.

You're all set! If you'd like to exit your virtual environment, you can run the command deactivate at any time. Just make sure to activate it again any time you're using Boatswain.

Authenticating with Canvas

In order to interface with the Canvas API, one must generate an authentication token from Canvas. This can be done in the Settings panel, in the Approved Integrations section. Click "New Access Token", specify a legitimate purpose, and optionally an expiration date. The next dialogue will display a generated string that will act as your authentication token.

Be sure to save the authentication token somewhere safe! It can't be recovered from Canvas once the dialogue is closed.

You'll use this to set up your Boatswain config file.

Authenticating with GitHub

Similarly, you can generate an authentication token from GitHub. You can generate one following the instructions from GitHub's documentation. TL;DR Create one here. You can include this in your Boatswain config file as well.

Setting up your Boatswain configuration

Boatswain is improves upon a previous tool (Canvas Wrangler) in that it actually uses a configuration file like a responsible sailor is supposed to. By default, this file is located at ~/.boatswain.ini. It uses the .ini file because nostalgia.

To set it up, you can actually just run the boatswain_env.py mini-library. It will take you through an interactive series of steps that will populate a minimal Boatswain configuration:

(venv) $ ./boatswain_env.py

Boatswain will be expanded to support arbitrary arguments in this config file which could save you some typing when running commands, but for now just accept that it's a little overkill.

If you don't need either one of Canvas or GitHub integration, you can just answer "no" when it asks if you'd like to configure one or the other. If you answer "yes", make sure you have the respective auth tokens ready.

When configuring Canvas, it will also ask for a URL. You should pass in the URL that corresponds to the host name where Canvas is hosted. For example, for Columbia, you should enter:

https://courseworks2.columbia.edu/

If you are using a version of Canvas Wrangler from before May 14, 2019, you may also add the url configuration to your boatswain.ini manually, e.g.:

[canvas]
token   = <token>
url     = https://courseworks2.columbia.edu/

Canvas Wrangler

Dear CourseWorks,

I am so so sorry that I made fun of you and called you names.
I called you CourseSucks all the time.
I take it back.

You are air.
You are water.
I never thought about what would happen to me if you left.
I am going to cling to you as long as I can.
I love you.

Jae

This is the predecessor to Boatswain, so we updated it with a few small improvements.

In a nutshell, Canvas Wrangler automates the grade upload process from a CSV spreadsheet to a Canvas assignment. This is great if you graded homework submissions elsewhere and would like to push your grades to Canvas for students to see. It supports numerical grades and textual comments.

You can start by seeing the different options that the Wrangler supports:

(venv) $ ./canvas-wrangler.py --help

Grade Spreadsheet Format

The grade spreadsheet should be a .csv file. Entries containing commas should be wrapped in quotation marks (e.g. "contains a comma, this entry"), and quotation marks should be "escaped" using double quotation marks (e.g. "this entry ""uses"" quotation marks"). (Exporting a .csv from Google Docs will do this for you.)

The grade spreadsheet must contain a single header row so that Canvas Wrangler can calibrate its column indices. By default, Canvas Wrangler will expect the student ID column to be named uni, the grade column to be named grade, and the comment column to be named comment.

However, these can be overridden by using the -S, -G, and -C flags respectfully and specifying the header name after the flag argument:

(venv) $ ./canvas-wrangler.py -G studentgrade <other args...>

In this case, instead of looking for grades in a column with header grade, the Wrangler will instead look for studentgrade. It will still look for comments under a column with header comment and the student ID under a column with header uni.

Extra columns are ignored.

You may also instruct the Wrangler to not upload grades or comments at all. You do so by passing an empty string to -G or -C:

(venv) $ ./canvas-wrangler.py -C '' <other args...>

In this case, the Wrangler will look for grades in a column with header grade, but not submit any comments.

You cannot instruct the Wrangler not to submit either, nor can you pass it an empty student ID header name.

Grade and Comment Submission

In order to upload grades to a Canvas assignment, you must retrieve its course ID and its assignment ID.

The program updates each student's grade record by reading the from the grades CSV spreadsheet and creating a new form entry for each comment and grade with their student ID.

To upload grades, run the command (with additional options):

(venv) $ ./canvas-wrangler.py <course-id> <assignment-id> <grades.csv-path>

If it succeeded, it will give you a URL which you can use to check up on the grade upload process. It can usually take a few minutes to process all the grade submissions.

This should work even if the student has not uploaded and submitted any files for the assignment on Canvas. If the student is missing from the Canvas roster, the grade upload status will let you know, but the rest of the grades will continue to be processed, so if you're managing multiple sections, you can just upload the same spreadsheet to two separate assignments in separate courses.

The assignment must be published before grades and comments can be uploaded. It's also a good idea to mute the assignment before pushing grades. Keep in mind that grades will overwrite, but comments will stack (previous comments will still be visible to students unless you go and manually delete them).

If you'd like to run the Wrangler without actually submitting anything, you can pass it the -n flag. This will prevent it from actually performing the POST request that submits the grades. If you would like additional output to help you debug any problems, pass the Wrangler the -v flag for verbose output.

Other Remarks

If you have any suggestions/complaints/love letters to the old Courseworks, please feel free to leave an Issue on this GitHub repo, or contribute by issuing us a Pull Request!