Fetching grades from my student account

[Lauren]

I am a student and a new programmer trying to write a program to fetch my grade from Aeries.

I have two questions

1) I noticed that the SSO information says that it doesn't work for student accounts. Will I even be able to call the API with my student account?

2) I am writing the code in Java. Can you please point me to any sample code to help get me started?

Thank you for any assistance you can provide.

-Lauren, 10th grade

[nathanl...@gmail.com]

Hello Lauren,

I am also a 10th grade student, wanting to practice some java and help my android using friends see their grades (which how I found this post).  I am by no means an expert, and may be completely wrong with these ideas, but it seems that is technically possible.  The API appears to be only for aeries.net, which is the teacher and admin portal, and student accounts cannot use aeries.net.  So, no your account cannot call the API as it is a student account.  However, student grades are accessible.  A look through the aeries.net demo shows that an admin could allow an api call to only recive grades, but you would have to convince your school/school disrict to give your application the certifcate for the API.  Once you hypothetically got the certifcate (which at my school would be nearly impossible), you would need to contact the head technology official at your school and have him/her grant you permission to see student grades.  So, if your school district is really nice and trusting, it is possible.   I wish you the best of luck if you attempt to get the necessary permissions.

As for java code, the aeries API uses a HTTP get request with json.  I have had some (small) experience with this, using android GCM and writing a servlet for an ios app (swift does not talk nicely with java RMI [actually, sun's RMI works terribly with firewalls, I used a small project called LipeRMI, which I recommend if you need any RMI servers in the future]).  Java uses a library called HttpURLConnection, and the methods setRequestProperty() and setRequestMethod() should help you get the data from aeries.  I will include some sample code from google's GCM sender (which uses HttpURLConnection), but I would recommend looking at the oracle documentation and use an IDE such as eclipse or intellij (intellij is not free software, but you can get it for free with a student id).  If you are in APCS in California, you probably use bluej, which is great for learning not making syntax errors but useless for finding the correct methods, what to import, etc.  Finally, use stackoverflow, it is a great site that really helped me with pretty much every new programming thing I encountered.  

Admin settings that I think would be required to fetch student grades (sorry about the small picture, hopefully it is high enough resolution to read):

Part of GCM sender code that uses HttpURLConnection, notice the parts with "application/json" and "POST" (for Aeries you would want to change that to "GET")

(once again, I hope this picture is large enough to read)

Good luck, and have fun coding!

Nathan White

[Nikhil Jha]

Hey, I noticed that this app for iOS allows me to check my grades for my district as a student account.

Do you think that means that my district has opened this up?

[Camden Iliff]

That app was written by a very bright student last year and has since graduated and moved on to college.  He was able to sniff the undocumented APIs we use to get structured data after logging in the parent/student by passing the username and password.  This is what I was referring to in the offline email I sent to you in December.  He does not use the public APIs, which requires the district to open up access to individual applications and grants access to all students in a district.  The way the "Grades for Parents and Students" app works is to emulate a browser.  It tricks the website into thinking it's a regular browser and creates HTTP POSTs and GETs to get the data from Aeries and then transforms that data into a user-friendly app layout.  There are disadvantages in the long run to using undocumented, non-public web services.  Eventually, we will stop using the APIs his app is using in favor of new ones and we will remove them from the software.  AT that time, his app will stop working as we are not obligated to maintain backwards-compatibility on APIs that are not specifically designed or identified for public consumption.  At that time he will need to find another way to get the information he needs and re-write his app.

 

It is important to also note that his app does not violate our "Aeries" trademark because it does not use our name in the name of his app.  He only references "Aeries" in his app description and uses wording that does not represent that the app is sanctioned by us.  This was not initially the case and we had to have a conversation with him to adjust his app name to not violate our trademark.  We have had to have similar conversations with many student-built apps over the years.

 

	Camden Iliff Director of Product Development Aeries® SIS / Eagle Software (888) 487-7555 c...@aeries.com

Make the most out of Aeries SIS by using the Aeries Web Version.  Visit http://maximize.aeries.com/ to read all of the details and explore the available resources.

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[saltyJeff]

I have a full implementation of an app here:
https://github.com/saltyJeff/gradeportal
The api part of it is in src/Aeries.ts

(written in Typescript, turn the interfaces into POJO's, and I guess you don't need the async/await since Java HTTP is blocking)

On Wednesday, November 25, 2015 at 7:35:09 PM UTC-8, Lauren wrote: