Welearn-bot

This is a bot which lets you interact with WeLearn from the command line. It can

• Download all files/resources from your courses and organize them in designated folders.
• Show your assignments, filter due assignments.
• Add your assignments to Google Calendar.

Go to our project wiki to learn more about configuring and using the script. Developers may be interested in the article on using the Moodle Web Service module, which shows you how to use the accompanying moodlews.service module to write your own script for interacting with WeLearn, or indeed any other Moodle service.

Demo

Video Tutorial

We have a Video Tutorial made in association with SlashDot Coding Club which goes over the Installation and Features of Welearn Bot on Windows and Linux.

Installation

This script runs on python3. To install it on your system, run

pip install --upgrade welearn-bot-iiserkol

The --upgrade flag ensures that you get the latest version.

If you are on Windows and are new to python, please go through this quick guide.

Running from source

Clone this repo or download the source code, and navigate to that directory. To install dependencies, run

pip install -r requirements.txt

You can now navigate to the src directory and run python welearn_bot [options ...].

Configuration

On *nix systems (linux, macos), create a ~/.welearnrc file; on Windows, create a welearn.ini in your C:/Users/USERNAME/ folder. Inside, fill in your details in the following format.

[auth]
username = AzureDiamond
password = hunter2

[courses]
MA1101
PH2202
CH3303
LS4404
ES5505

You may omit any or all of your [auth] credentials, in which case you will be prompted each time you run the program.

There are many more configuration options to explore, such as the [files] and [gcal] sections - for a detailed breakdown, please consult our wiki page on writing your configuration file.

Google calendar integration

Integration with Google Calendar is completely optional. This feature allows you to save your assignment dates directly to Google Calendar, when you use the --gcalendar option. You can also choose which calendar within your Google Calendar account to push events to.

You will have to authenticate using OAuth2.0 and add some lines to your configuration file. Please follow the steps in the Google Calendar integration article. At the end, your configuration file will have a section of the following form.

[gcal]
client_id = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.apps.googleusercontent.com
client_secret = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
calendar_id = c_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@group.calendar.google.com

Usage

Run welearn_bot -h to get the following help message.

usage: welearnbot.py [-h] [--version] [-v] [-d] [-c] [-i [IGNORETYPES ...]] [-r [ROLLS ...]] [-p PATHPREFIX] [-f] [-u] [-m] action [courses ...]

A command line client for interacting with WeLearn.

positional arguments:
  action                choose from
                            files       - downloads files/resources
                            assignments - lists assignments, downloads attachments
                            submissions - lists submission count, downloads attachments
                            urls        - lists urls
                            courses     - lists enrolled courses
                            whoami      - shows the user's name and exits
                            Abbreviations such as any one of 'f', 'a', 's', 'u', 'c', 'w' are supported.
  courses               IDs of the courses to download files from. The word ALL selects all courses 
                            from [submissions] section in .welearnrc or welearn.ini for 'submissions' action
                            from the [courses] section in .welearnrc or welearn.ini for all other action

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -v, --verbose         show verbose warnings/errors
  -d, --dueassignments  show only due assignments with the 'assignments' action
  -c, --gcalendar       add due assignments to Google Calendar with the 'assignments' action
  -i [IGNORETYPES ...], --ignoretypes [IGNORETYPES ...]
                        ignores the specified extensions when downloading, overrides .welearnrc
  -r [ROLLS ...], --rolls [ROLLS ...]
                        roll numbers for which you want to download the submissions using the 'submissions' action
  -p PATHPREFIX, --pathprefix PATHPREFIX
                        save the downloads to a custom path, overrides .welearnrc
  -f, --forcedownload   force download files even if already downloaded/ignored
  -u, --update-course-cache
                        update course cache. Use this class when you change [submissions] section of config
  -m, --missingdownload
                        re-download those files which were downloaded earlier but deleted/moved from their location

See our article on using command line options for a detailed breakdown.

Examples

Testing your setup

If your .welearnrc or welearn.ini file is set up correctly, the following command should simply display your name.

welearn_bot whoami

To get a list of courses you are enrolled in, run

welearn_bot courses

Basic commands

To pull all files from the courses MA1101 and CH3303, run

welearn_bot files MA1101 CH3303

You can use the shorthand f for files, so the following is an equivalent command.

welearn_bot f MA1101 CH3303

To show assignments and download their attachments from the course MA1101, run

welearn_bot assignments MA1101

To list due assignments (due date in the future) from all courses, run

welearn_bot -d assignments ALL

Make sure that the -d flag comes first!

To list all urls from the CH3303 course, run

welearn_bot urls CH3303

Calendar integration

To list due assignments from all courses, and add them to your calendar, run

welearn_bot -dc assignments ALL

Ignoring filetypes

To download all resources from the course CH3303, ignoring pdf files, run

welearn_bot -i pdf -- files CH3303

Note the use of -- which is essential for separating the IGNORETYPES from the courses. The following format may be preferred.

welearn_bot files CH3303 -i pdf

To override the .welearnrc ignore settings and allow all extensions, but still respect past downloads, run

welearn_bot -i -- files CH3303

Force downloads and pathprefix

To force download all resources from the course PH2202, even if already downloaded and present or set to be ignored, and put all the course directories in the ~/notes folder, run

welearn_bot files PH2202 -fp ~/notes 

Missing downloads

If you've used welearn_bot to download some files, say from MA1101, but have subsequently deleted or moved them from the download location, they will not be downloaded again if you simply run

welearn_bot files MA1101

Instead, you will see a message calling these files Missing. To download these files again, run

welearn_bot -m files MA1101

Features for TAs

Notable features

• The assignments for each subject are downloaded into it's own submissions folder.
• Each student has it's own folder for each assignment.
• If the assignment are in archived form (compressed), they are automatically uncompressed.

Config changes

The users will have to add a [submissions] section to their config with the appropriate information (as shown below)

[submissions]
CS1103 = ALL
CS1101 = 21MS020, ... , 21MS120
CS1102 = 21MS120,  21MS121,  21MS122,  21MS123,  21MS124,  21MS125,  21MS126
CS1101 = 20MS011,  19MS112, 21MS020, ... , 21MS120

Note that you have to add key value pairs of courseid and the roll numbers for which to fetch the submissions The roll numbers can be entered in the following form:

• ALL to fetch all submissions
• a range of roll numbers
• a explicit list of roll numbes
• a mix of range and explicit roll numbers

CLI arguments

• An additional action, s (submissions) has been exposed to the users for using this feature
• The users can also specify list of roll numbers from the cli using -r (--rolls) option
• CLI arguments override the config settings
• The users can update the cache using the -u flag. Use this class when you change [submissions] section of config