canvasHacks
Scripts to make using Canvas easier
List of scripts
| Script | Description | Data files used | Other requirements | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pretty4Canvas.py | Converts unformatted tagged HTML to formatted HTML for making pretty Canvas pages from large documents | One or more *.html or *.txt HTML files | Right now, it makes tabs from top-level headings, and pretties up tables. This is the stuff I find myself going crazy doing manually, so this automates it. The script is still sort of buggy, and the HTML docs produced need some cleanup either in Canvas or in a text editor. | |
| GenerateQuestionBanks.py | Takes a spreadsheet containing questions (or pieces of questions) and answers and formats them for Respondus, which can then import bulk questions as a question bank. This was built in order to quickly generate large question banks containing HTML (embed) code, but could be repurposed for other types of questions. | Spreadsheet (csv file) containing question pieces to automatically generate questions from. | Respondus software for Canvas | Check out this brief explanation video |
Pretty4Canvas example
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| A nice, formatted Google doc, a few hundred pages long, that needs to be converted to a Canvas page. | The over-styled HTML produced when the doc is pasted straight into a new Canvas page. The good formatting is lost, and bad formatting is added. | Pretty4Canvas to the rescue! Here it is running through the tables in one of the files and asking whether or not to format the header row. |
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| Cleaned up and re-formatted HTML post-processing | A beautiful Canvas page! With tabs! | A pretty table in university colors as displayed in Canvas. The only thing edited here after Pretty4Canvas script was applied was to add a table caption |
Setting up
The code for these projects require the following list of packages in order to run.
- os
- tkinter
- pandas
To install using conda, execute the command:
conda install os
conda install tkinter
...and so on
To install using pip, execute the command:
pip install os
pip install tkinter
...and so on
Running
Once python and the packages listed above have been installed, to run a script from command line, execute the command:
python Pretty4Canvas.py