Retrieving course roster
Make sure you've read about authenticating API requests before proceeding to the guide below.
The Memberships endpoint accepts both the ltik based and service key based API authentication methods.
The LTI protocol allows you to retrieve roster information for an LMS context through the Names and Roles Provisioning service. Users that are part of an LMS context are called members. LTIAAS gives you access to this service through the /api/memberships API endpoint.
The membership object
This guide focuses on the most common and/or relevant fields of the membership object, a detailed description of available fields can be found in the IMS Context Membership documentation:
Learning Tools Interoperability Names and Role Provisioning Services, 1EdTech Final Release Version 2.0, 1EdTech Consortium, April 2019, 2. Context Membership, https://www.imsglobal.org/spec/lti-nrps/v2p0#context-membership
The membership is the LTI representation of a user in a certain LMS context. Each membership contains information about the user and their status and role within that context.
{
"user_id": "2",
"email": "user@email.com",
"name": "John Doe",
"roles": [...],
"status": "Active"
}
Fields containing personal information like name and email might not be present in the memberships information. The LMS can choose to omit this information based on their privacy rules. The only fields guaranteed to be present in this section are user_id and roles.
user_id
The user_id field contains the user's identifier inside of the LMS. This ID will probably not be unique between LMSes, so it's not recommended to be used alone as a primary identifier. We go into more detail on this topic in the Performing SSO guide.
email
The email field contains the user's registered email inside of the LMS.
name
The name field contains the user's registered full name.
roles
The roles field contains a list of the user's roles within this specific launch context.
A list of all possible roles can be found in the IMS Role Vocabulary:
Learning Tools Interoperability Core Specification, IMS Final Release Spec Version 1.3, 1EdTech Consortium, April 2019, A.2 Role vocabularies, https://www.imsglobal.org/node/162741#role-vocabularies
status
The status field contains the user's current status within this specific launch context. The value of this field can either be Active or Inactive.
Calling the Memberships endpoint
To retrieve the memberships related to the context that originated an LTI launch, you need to make a GET request to the /api/memberships endpoint of your LTIAAS' account subdomain.
For a description of all accepted query parameters, as well as possible response bodies and statuses, check the [GET] Memberships endpoint API Reference.
// Building Ltik based API authentication header
const authenticationHeader = `LTIK-AUTH-V2 ${API_KEY}:${LTIK}`
const headers = { Authorization: authorizationHeader }
// Making /api/memberships GET request
const response = requests.get('https://your.ltiaas.com/api/memberships', { headers })
const members = response['members']
A successful response will be an object with a members field containing an array of membership objects tied to that LTI context.
{
"id": "https://lms.example.com/course/1/memberships?page=1",
"context": {...},
"members": [
{
"user_id": "2",
"email": "user@email.com",
"name": "John Doe",
"roles": ["Learner"],
"status": "Active"
},
{
"user_id": "3",
"email": "another_user@email.com",
"name": "Bob Doe",
"roles": ["Administrator", "Instructor"],
"status": "Active"
}
]
}
The response will also contain an id field, containing the ID for the current memberships page. And a context object, containing information about the LTI context that originated the launch.
You can find more information about the context object in the ID Token context field documentation as the object here is the same as the one present in the ID Token.
Response pagination field
This functionality might not be supported by every LMS.
The next field will only be present if there are more memberships to be retrieved from the context. You can read more about this in the Handling pagination guide.
{
"id": "https://lms.example.com/course/1/memberships?page=1",
"context": {...},
"members": [...],
"next": "https://lms.example.com/course/1/memberships?page=2"
}
Filtering results by user role
This functionality might not be supported by every LMS.
You can filter membership results by a specific role by sending the ?role=<ROLE> query parameter when calling the /api/memberships endpoint.
A list of all possible roles can be found in the IMS Role Vocabulary: Learning Tools Interoperability Core Specification, IMS Final Release Spec Version 1.3, 1EdTech Consortium, April 2019, A.2 Role vocabularies, https://www.imsglobal.org/node/162741#role-vocabularies
Most roles in the vocabulary are represented by URLs, so their value needs to be URL encoded to be safely sent as a query parameter. :::
// Building Ltik based API authentication header
const authenticationHeader = `LTIK-AUTH-V2 ${API_KEY}:${LTIK}`
const headers = { Authorization: authorizationHeader }
// Making /api/memberships GET request
const role = encodeURIComponent('http://purl.imsglobal.org/vocab/lis/v2/membership#Instructor')
const response = requests.get(`https://your.ltiaas.com/api/memberships?role=${role}`, { headers })
const members = response['members']
Filtering results by activity access
This functionality might not be supported by every LMS.
You can filter membership results by users that have access to an activity in the LMS. You can achieve this by sending the ?resourceLinkId=<RESOURCE_LINK_ID> query parameter when calling the /api/memberships endpoint.
The resource link ID for an activity can be retrieved from the idtoken.launch.resourceLink.id field of the ID Token generated by launching the LTI tool from that activity.
// Building Ltik based API authentication header
const authenticationHeader = `LTIK-AUTH-V2 ${API_KEY}:${LTIK}`
const headers = { Authorization: authorizationHeader }
// Making /api/idtoken GET request
const idtoken = requests.get('https://your.ltiaas.com/api/idtoken', { headers })
const resourceLinkId = idtoken['launch']['resourceLink']['id']
// Making /api/memberships GET request
const response = requests.get(`https://your.ltiaas.com/api/memberships?resourceLinkId=${resourceLinkId}`, { headers })
const members = response['members']
Checking service availability
The Names and Roles Provisioning service might not be available for every LTI launch context. Before attempting to retrieve memberships you can make a call to the ID Token endpoint and check the services section to know if the service is available.
You can know if the service is available based on the value of the idtoken.services.namesAndRoles.available boolean field:
// Building Ltik based API authentication header
const authenticationHeader = `LTIK-AUTH-V2 ${API_KEY}:${LTIK}`
const headers = { Authorization: authorizationHeader }
// Making /api/idtoken GET request
const idtoken = requests.get('https://your.ltiaas.com/api/idtoken', { headers })
const isServiceAvailable = idtoken['services']['namesAndRoles']['available']
if (isServiceAvailable) {
// Making /api/memberships GET request
const response = requests.get(`https://your.ltiaas.com/api/memberships`, { headers })
const members = response['members']
}
