BSAPI

A basic Python wrapper for the D2LValence Brightspace API.

The package is published on PyPI as brightspace-api.

Installation

Install the latest release from PyPI:

python -m pip install brightspace-api

To upgrade an existing installation:

python -m pip install --upgrade brightspace-api

Requires Python 3.10 or newer. The only runtime dependency is requests, which pip will install automatically.

After installation, the package is importable as bsapi:

import bsapi

Quick start

To construct a bsapi.BSAPI instance, you need the LMS host URL and an OAuth access token (see OAuth Authentication below for how to obtain one).

import bsapi

access_token = '<your OAuth access token>'
lms_url = '<your LMS host URL>'
le_version = '1.79'
lp_version = '1.47'

api = bsapi.BSAPI(access_token, lms_url, le_version, lp_version)
whoami = api.whoami()

print(f'Identified as: {whoami.first_name} {whoami.last_name}')

If you want to verify whether the configured LE and LP product versions are supported, call the api.check_versions() method. It is also possible to forcibly use the latest supported versions by calling api.check_versions(use_latest=True). This will overwrite the configured LE and LP product versions with the latest ones according to the LMS host. Generally you want to specify explicit versions. Even though updates are typically backwards compatible, it may still have unexpected results or cause issues with this wrapper. As such, testing and using explicit versions may provide better long term stability.

The bsapi.APIConfig class provides a way to collect the various configuration parameters, which can easily be serialized to and deserialized from JSON. Using this configuration instance, a convenience method can be called to create bsapi.BSAPI instances via BSAPI.from_config(config, access_token).

OAuth Authentication

To obtain an access token, use the OAuth 2.0 flow:

import bsapi
from bsapi import oauth

# Step 1: Create authorization URL
client_id = '<your client id>'
redirect_uri = '<your redirect URI>'
scope = "core:*:* grades:*:*"
auth_url = oauth.create_auth_url(client_id, redirect_uri, scope)
print(f'Visit: {auth_url}')

# Step 2: After user authorizes, extract code from callback URL
callback_url = '<URL user was redirected to>'
authorization_code = oauth.parse_callback_url(callback_url)

# Step 3: Exchange code for access token
client_secret = '<your client secret>'
token_response = oauth.exchange_code_for_token(
    client_id, client_secret, redirect_uri, authorization_code
)
access_token = token_response['access_token']

# Step 4: Use access token with API
api = bsapi.BSAPI(access_token, lms_url)

OAuth token refreshing

Access tokens expire after some time. Once expired you must either go through the authorization OAuth 2.0 flow described above again, or if available use the issued refresh token, using the OAuth 2.0 flow:

import bsapi
from bsapi import oauth

# Step 1: Create authorization URL
client_id = '<your client id>'
redirect_uri = '<your redirect URI>'
scope = "core:*:* grades:*:*"
auth_url = oauth.create_auth_url(client_id, redirect_uri, scope)
print(f'Visit: {auth_url}')

# Step 2: After user authorizes, extract code from callback URL
callback_url = '<URL user was redirected to>'
authorization_code = oauth.parse_callback_url(callback_url)

# Step 3: Exchange code for access token
client_secret = '<your client secret>'
token_response = oauth.exchange_code_for_token(
    client_id, client_secret, redirect_uri, authorization_code
)
access_token = token_response['access_token']
refresh_token = token_response['refresh_token']

# Step 4: Use access token with API
api = bsapi.BSAPI(access_token, lms_url)

# Step 5: After some time the access token expires, so refresh it
refresh_response = oauth.refresh_access_token(
    client_id, client_secret, refresh_token
)
new_access_token = refresh_response['access_token']
# response also contains another refresh_token entry for future use

# Step 6: Use new access token with API
api = bsapi.BSAPI(new_access_token, lms_url)

Design

The bsapi.BSAPI class provides wrappers for a subset of commonly used API endpoints and uses OAuth authentication via Bearer tokens. Endpoints that send data via DELETE/POST/PUT HTTP methods are typically implemented directly as public methods. Endpoints that get data via a GET HTTP method typically are implemented as a private method (e.g. _whoami()) that return the raw JSON object. The public method equivalent (e.g. whoami()) will call the private method and attempt to interpret this JSON object into a properly typed object as defined in bsapi.types (e.g. bsapi.types.WhoAmIUser). Generally you should use the public method, but there could be reasons to use the private method instead, namely:

• A newer version of the API has added more fields to JSON objects returned that are not included by the typed version.
• A newer version of the API has made non-backwards compatible changes that cause interpreting the JSON object to fail.
• The JSON object returned does not match the API documentation, and hence interpreting it fails.

Ideally these last two cases do not occur, or are quickly fixed, but sadly the Brightspace API documentation is not entirely correct/consistent with the actual responses observed during testing. It also tends to be outdated at times, where responses contain additional fields not (yet) described by the API documentation.

Feedback

The bsapi.feedback module contains several FeedbackEncoder implementations that allow feedback plain-text to be formatted as HTML. This formatted HTML can then be provided as rich-text HTML input for the bsapi.BSAPI.set_dropbox_folder_submission_feedback endpoint using the feedback_html parameter. The use case for this module is graders writing student feedback in plain-text with some Markdown influence, which allows them to insert objects such as code blocks that are then nicely rendered to students.

Helper

The bsapi.helper module defines an APIHelper class that wraps around a bsapi.BSAPI instance. It extends the API by providing helper methods to perform common operations not directly supported by the API.

Building from source

Clone the repository and install the build front-end:

python -m pip install --upgrade build

Then build the source distribution and wheel:

python -m build

The resulting artifacts are written to dist/. Install the built wheel locally with:

python -m pip install dist/brightspace_api-<version>-py3-none-any.whl

Links

• PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/brightspace-api/
• Source: https://github.com/JobDoesburg/bsapi
• Issues: https://github.com/JobDoesburg/bsapi/issues
• Brightspace (D2L Valence) API documentation: https://docs.valence.desire2learn.com

License

Distributed under the terms of the LICENSE file included in this repository.