Assignments, but Automated

An automated way of grabbing Canvas assignments and posting them to a Notion database

🔮 How it Works

1. When the script starts, every checked assignment will be removed
2. Afterward, the first 100 assignments from each specified course are uploaded to the database
   • Items that do not have due dates will not be listed in the database
   • Items whose due date already passed will not be listed
   • All due dates will be listed in the specified time zone in the .env file
   • Names containing "Exam", "Midterm", or "Final" are marked with 🎯, "Project" with 🌀, "Quiz" with 📗, and otherwise with ✏️
3. When a new semester starts, all you have to do is update the course tags in the database and change the courses' Canvas ids in the .env

⏰ Getting Started

Cloning the Repository

Clone the repository with the following git command:

git clone https://github.com/RyanMcPherson7/assignments-but-automated.git

Creating the Notion Database

1. This tutorial will assume you have working knowledge of making tables in Notion. If not, a tutorial can be found here
2. Create a new Notion page and select table under database
3. Create a table with 5 columns, each for the name, date, course, checkbox, and link respectfully

   Note: You can add any additional columns as you please

   1. Give the name column a property type of Title
   2. Give the date column a property type of Date
   3. Give the course column a property type of Multi-select
   4. Give the checkbox column a property type of Checkbox
   5. Give the url column a property type of URL
      1. Create a new tag for each course you're taking

         The tag names will be the 1st 7 characters of the course's name on Canvas. If the course name on Canvas is "COP3530 - DSA Fall 2021", then the tag name will be "COP3530"

4. You can add sorting methods to your database by clicking on sort in the upper right corner. I recommend sorting by checkbox (checked are placed at the bottom of the list) and by due date (closer dates are at the top). Here are my settings:

   

5. If done correctly, your database should look something like this:

   

Configuring the Environment File

1. The .env file holds all necessary variables for the script to run properly
2. The next few sections will show you how to acquire each variable's value
3. For now, open the included .env file and have it off to the side
4. The variable's name and corresponding value is as follows:

Variable Name	Value
CANVAS_ORGANIZATION_TITLE	your organization's version of Canvas Instructure
CANVAS_API_KEY	your API key generated for your Canvas account
COURSE_ID_LIST	list of canvas course ID's, each separated by a comma
NOTION_API_KEY	your API key generated for your Notion account
NOTION_DATABASE_ID	your database's specific ID
NOTION_CHECKBOX_ID	the exact name of your checkbox column
NOTION_NAME_ID	the exact name of your title column
NOTION_DATE_ID	the exact name of your date column
NOTION_MULTI_ID	the exact name of your course column
NOTION_URL_ID	the exact name of your link column
CANVAS_SEARCH_TYPE	the type of resource you wish to grab from Canvas
CANVAS_SEARCH_NUMBER_LIMIT	the number of resource items to grab from Canvas per course
CANVAS_COURSE_NAME_LENGTH	the length of each course tag's name in Notion
TIME_ZONE	the time zone in which all Notion dates will be in

Canvas Variables

1. The organization title can be found by logging in to your Canvas account and inspecting the URL. The highlighted portion is the value of CANVAS_ORGANIZATION_TITLE in the .env file

   

2. The Canvas API key can be generated by logging on to your Canvas and clicking Account -> Settings -> scroll down to "Approved Integrations" -> click on "New Access Token" -> Generate Token. The token is the long string of characters under the "Token" section. This is the value of CANVAS_API_KEY in the .env file

3. The course Id's can be found by visiting each course's homepage and inspecting the URL. The highlighted portion is the class's Canvas course Id. Do this for every class and write out each value separated by a comma in COURSE_ID_LIST in the .env file

   

Notion Variables

1. The Notion API key can be generated by going here and clicking on "Create new integration" -> Submit. The API key is the Internal Integration Token under the "Secrets" header. Click on "Show" and copy this value into NOTION_API_KEY in the .env file

2. We now must connect your created integration to your database. On your Notion database page, in the upper right, click on Share -> Invite -> under "select an integration" choose the name of the integration you created to generate your API key -> Invite

3. The Notion database Id can be found by inspecting the URL of your Notion database. For this step, you will have to use Notion's web browser version. The highlighted portion is your database's Id (the portion after "notion.so/" and before the "?"). This is the value of NOTION_DATABASE_ID in the .env file

   

4. The name of your checkbox column is the value of NOTION_CHECKBOX_ID in the .env file

5. The name of your title column is the value of NOTION_NAME_ID in the .env file

6. The name of your date column is the value of NOTION_DATE_ID in the .env file

7. The name of your multi-select (course) column is the value of NOTION_MULTI_ID in the .env file

8. The name of your url column is the value of NOTION_URL_ID in the .env file

   Note: if you change the names of any of these columns, you must update them in the .env file

After completion, your .env file should look something like this:

CANVAS_ORGANIZATION_TITLE = ufl
CANVAS_API_KEY = XXXX~XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
COURSE_ID_LIST = 436423,123456,654321

NOTION_API_KEY = secret_XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
NOTION_DATABASE_ID = b0c43536536f4b28920d164bba7f699a
NOTION_CHECKBOX_ID = Course
NOTION_NAME_ID = Name
NOTION_DATE_ID = Due By
NOTION_MULTI_ID = Class
NOTION_URL_ID = Link

# additional config variables
CANVAS_SEARCH_TYPE = assignments
CANVAS_SEARCH_NUMBER_LIMIT = 100
CANVAS_COURSE_NAME_LENGTH = 7
TIME_ZONE = America/New_York

🚀 Running the Script

1. We will be running the script using Node.js. You can download it here
2. To install the Node modules, navigate to the project folder assignments-but-automated and run the following command (you only have to do this once):

npm install

3. To run the script, run the command:

npm start

This will take a few seconds depending on your internet connection and number of assignments