Gitlab to Canvas syncing

For a working example check out the FRTF10-repo where as soon as any changes in pdfs are pushed to the to_canvas folder on the master branch they are uploaded to the to_canvas folder on the canvas page.

Gitlab CI

Gitlab CI is run through a file called .gitlab-ci.yml in the root folder of the repository. This file can setup the environment we need to run certain scripts, define how and what scripts should be run and define in what cases it should be run. For our example we use this file

   1 image: "python:3.7"
   2 
   3 before_script:
   4   - python3 -m pip install canvasapi
   5 
   6 canvas_push:
   7   script:
   8     - python3 to_canvas.py
   9   stage: deploy
  10   only:
  11     refs:
  12       - master
  13     changes:
  14       - to_canvas/**/*.{pdf}

where image tells the runner to use a python3 docker image, before_script runs a command in the container created from the image that installs the package canvasapi and the python script runs if any pdf-files in the folder to_canvas has been modified.

Runners

See https://gitlab.control.lth.se/regler/<REPO>/-/settings/ci_cd, where <REPO> should be replaced with the repository name, for instructions about runners. Hopefully we will soon have some shared runners for the department, but for the moment they have to be set up for each project specifically.

Python script

The current script uploads all pdf files from a folder (with subfolders) and creates the corresponding folder structure on canvas.

The script assumes there exists environment variables for a canvas API token and canvas course code. A token can be added by navigating to https://gitlab.control.lth.se/regler/<REPO>/-/settings/ci_cd, where you replace <REPO> with the repository name, and looking under Variables. There you add a token with name CANVAS_TOKEN and one with name CANVAS_COURSE_CODE.

Currently the script will upload and replace files if they already exists, but it wont otherwise delete files if they are removed from the repo.

Canvas API Token

The API token can be generated in a canvas profile, and this one is generated from an account that should have access to all courses run by Automatic Control 13596~t2TYuTRlaJnfvyTznfvhDOqq7B85o2wD2jU8NBCsixzLirB8nceTFIvUzbldIa1K.