Questions about using the Classroom Api to submit content for student assignments

Question

I'm trying to use Google Classroom's Rest resources (https://developers.google.com/classroom/reference/rest/v1/courses.courseWork.studentSubmissions#StudentSubmission) to implement a student posting an answer to a "Simple Question" assignment (i.e.: An assignment which takes only a string as the answer) As of now I'm using the following body for my patch calls:

StudentSubmission studentSubmission = new StudentSubmission();
studentSubmission.setMultipleChoiceSubmission(new MultipleChoiceSubmission().setAnswer(answer));
classroomService.courses().courseWork().studentSubmissions().patch(courseId, courseWorkId, id, studentSubmission).execute();

And the result is an Error 400 - Invalid JSON payload received..

{
  "code": 400,
  "details": [
    {
      "@type": "type.googleapis.com/google.rpc.BadRequest"
    }
  ],
  "errors": [
    {
      "domain": "global",
      "message": "updateMask: updateMask may only contain \"draftGrade\" or \"assignedGrade\".",
      "reason": "badRequest"
    }
  ],

I can successfully submit the assignment using courses.courseWork.studentSubmissions.turnIn, but when submitting short answer and multiple choice questions, I end up submitting blank answers!

How do I submit answers to short answer and multiple choice questions through the classroom api.

Is there a way to make this happen - i.e.: for a third party software to update an answer from a student's assignment? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Is there a way to make this happen - i.e.: for a third party software to update an answer from a student's assignment?

Unfortunately, no.

Today you can only set the draftGrade and assignedGrade, as indicated by the error message about the field mask (only fields set-able in the field mask are written when a PATCH request is made).

There is an open request for this behavior here - https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/155218358. Please upvote and add any use case or explain how this feature (or lack of it) impacts your use case. The Classroom team uses this information to prioritize feature requests.