Canvas Assignment Submission Downloader

This script downloads all submissions for all assignments from a Canvas course using the Canvas API.

Prerequisites

Ensure you have Python installed (3.8+ required).

Setup

1. Clone this repository (or place the script in your project folder).
2. Create a .env file in the same directory as the script and add your Canvas credentials:

   CANVAS_API_URL=https://yourinstitution.instructure.com/
   CANVAS_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
   CANVAS_COURSE_ID=your_course_id

3. Set up a virtual environment (Recommended):

   python -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate  # On macOS/Linux
   venv\Scripts\activate  # On Windows

4. Install dependencies within the virtual environment:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

5. Run the script:

   python index.py

How It Works

• The script connects to Canvas using the provided API credentials.
• It retrieves all submissions from published assignments in the course.
• If a submission has an attached file, it downloads it into the submissions/ directory.
• The script will create the submissions/ directory if it doesn't exist.

Configuration Options

Including All Submission Versions

By default, the script downloads all submission versions for each student. You can control this behavior by changing the INCLUDE_ALL_SUBMISSIONS setting:

# Configuration options
INCLUDE_ALL_SUBMISSIONS = True  # Set to False to download only the latest submission

• When set to True: The script will download every submission version the student has made, organizing them with version numbers in the filename (e.g., student_name_12345_v1_20240327_123456_assignment.pdf, student_name_12345_v2_20240327_124530_assignment.pdf)

• When set to False: The script will download only the most recent submission from each student

Excluding extensions

If you want to filter out certain file extensions, you can specify it as:

EXCLUDED_EXTENSIONS = {".mp4", ".mov", ".avi"}  # Add any extensions you want to skip

Adjusting MAX_WORKERS

MAX_WORKERS controls the level of concurrency, which will impact performance:

• Increasing MAX_WORKERS: Allows more simultaneous downloads, improving speed for large assignments. However, setting it too high may overload the system or Canvas API rate limits.
• Decreasing MAX_WORKERS: Reduces concurrency, which may help with API throttling but slows down downloads.

Notes

• Ensure your API token has the necessary permissions to access course submissions.
• Submission downloads that fail are logged in failed_downloads.txt.
• Each submission filename includes:
  • Student name
  • Student ID
  • Version number (when INCLUDE_ALL_SUBMISSIONS is True)
  • Submission timestamp
  • Original filename

License

This project is licensed under the AGPL-3.0 license License.