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bb: Command line Blackboard client/scraper

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Re: bb: Command line Blackboard client/scraper

#4

Post by cel »

psophis wrote: post #2

Would be cool if there was this type of tool for canvas[0] as that what my school and most are schools switching to. [0] http://www.instructure.com/

Looks like it's open source [0]. If they have a clean API it might be doable without scraping.

[0] https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

Re: bb: Command line Blackboard client/scraper

#6

Post by cel »

josePhoenix wrote: post #5

Cool stuff. I once had something similar for the scary-sounding Jenzabar LMS that I used in college. Have you tried this on other Blackboard deployments? Looks like the QuikPay stuff at least is U. of Rochester-specific.

I haven't tried it on other Blackboard deployments. I hope if someone is interested in doing so they may try it out, either as a fork or by making bb more general. I would expect to find issues with differences in the HTML which would have to be handled appropriately.

The QuikPay and Sequoia stuff is specific to institutions/installations that have integrated with those companies, which includes some other than rochester.edu, but of course not all.

Re: bb: Command line Blackboard client/scraper

#7

Post by jenseng »

cel wrote: post #4
psophis wrote: post #2

Would be cool if there was this type of tool for canvas[0] as that what my school and most are schools switching to. [0] http://www.instructure.com/

Looks like it's open source [0]. If they have a clean API it might be doable without scraping. [0] https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

The API is pretty comprehensive, and is growing daily. With the exception of some legacy features, all of the web app's UI is built on top of it, as are the mobile apps.

https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/index.html

Re: bb: Command line Blackboard client/scraper

#8

Post by jingo »

It is a (rare) pleasure to see a simple solution posted to HN that does not require Python or some other scripting language. Or GNU sed for that matter.

I no longer have a Blackboard account, but if I did, or had a guest account to play with, I would try rewriting your Bash script in POSIX-like sh.

Nice work and a good choice of project.

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