Ignore users already added to Google Classroom when inviting

Question

Gooogle Classroom Script to add either Teachers or Students based on a list of emails in a google sheet.

I am getting an error "Requested Entity already exists" due to a user on the list already being a member of the classroom.

Question - Is there a way to check if an email address on the list in Col A or Col B is already a member, and skip if they are?

Or to wait until the error above comes back, then skip the error and continue through the list to invite all other users on the list?

Thanks Jon

function MultipleAccountInvite() {
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheetByName("1 Class Invite");

var CN = ss.getRange('B1').getValue();
var CourseId = parseInt(CN).toFixed();
Logger.log(CourseId);
var Avals = ss.getRange(3, 1,20).getValues();
var Alast = Avals.filter(String).length;
Logger.log(Avals)
Logger.log(Alast)
var Bvals = ss.getRange('B3:B').getValues();
var Blast = Bvals.filter(String).length;
Logger.log(Bvals)
Logger.log(Blast)

for (var i = 0; i < Alast; i++) {
  var teachers = Avals[i][0];
  if (teachers) {
    var inviteteachers = Classroom.Invitations.create({
      "courseId": CourseId,
      "userId": teachers,
      "role": "TEACHER"
    })
    }
}

for (var j = 0; j < Blast; j++) {
  var students = Bvals[j][0];
  if (students) {
    var invitestudents = Classroom.Invitations.create({
      "courseId": CourseId,
      "userId": students,
      "role": "STUDENT"
    })
    }
}

}

Answer 1

I believe your situation and goal as follows.

• In your Spreadsheet, the values of columns "A" and "B" has the email addresses for teacher and student.
• You want to invite the teacher and student using the email addresses. At that time, when the student is invited, the error occurs. You want to remove the error.

Issue and workaround:

In your case, the error occurs at the following situations.

1. When students of "userId": students, has already been joined to courseId.
2. When students of "userId": students, has already been invited, but the user has not joined to courseId.

About 1, the existing students can be checked using the method of "courses.students.list". But about 2, when the invitation list is retrieved with the method of "invitations.list", the invitation ID, which is Identifier of the invited user. in the official document, is not the email address. Although the values returned from Classroom.Invitations.create() include the ID. But in your situation, I'm worry that several students have already been invited and the ID is not saved.

From these situation, I would like to propose a workaround for achieving your goal. In this workaround, try catch is used. By this, when the error occurs, the error can be skipped.

When this workaround is reflected to your script, it becomes as follows.

Modified script:

From:

for (var j = 0; j < Blast; j++) {
  var students = Bvals[j][0];
  if (students) {
    var invitestudents = Classroom.Invitations.create({
      "courseId": CourseId,
      "userId": students,
      "role": "STUDENT"
    })
    }
}

To:

var studentData = Classroom.Courses.Students.list(CourseId).students.reduce((o, e) => Object.assign(o, {[e.profile.emailAddress]: true}), {});
var response = [];
for (var j = 0; j < Blast; j++) {
  var students = Bvals[j][0];
  if (students && !studentData[students]) {
    try {
      var invitestudents = Classroom.Invitations.create({"courseId": CourseId,"userId": students,"role": "STUDENT"})
      response.push(invitestudents);
    } catch(e) {}
  }
}
console.log(response);  // You can retrieve the invitation ID here.

• In this modified script, 2 situations mentioned above can be avoided.
• And, in this modification, the students who have already been joined can be checking studentData. About the students who have already been invited but not been joined, they are checked using try catch.

Note:

• Classroom.Invitations.create() returns {"courseId":"###","role":"STUDENT","id":"###"}. So when this id is saved, you can check id has already been invited. But after the student was invited, when id is not known, I couldn't find the method for creating id. So I proposed above modification.

References:

• Method: courses.students.list
• Method: invitations.list
• Method: invitations.create

Added:

From Problem with this line. Am getting an errorTypeError:cannot read property 'reduce' of undefined:--- var studentData = Classroom.Courses.Students.list(CourseId).students.reduce(callback, initialValue)((o, e) => Object.assign(o, {[e.profile.emailAddress]: true}), {}); var response = []; in your replying, it seems that in your case, there are no existing students. In this case, how about the following modified script?

Modified script:

From:

for (var j = 0; j < Blast; j++) {
  var students = Bvals[j][0];
  if (students) {
    var invitestudents = Classroom.Invitations.create({
      "courseId": CourseId,
      "userId": students,
      "role": "STUDENT"
    })
    }
}

To:

var response = [];
for (var j = 0; j < Blast; j++) {
  var students = Bvals[j][0];
  if (students) {
    try {
      var invitestudents = Classroom.Invitations.create({"courseId": CourseId,"userId": students,"role": "STUDENT"});
      response.push(invitestudents);
    } catch(e) {}
  }
}
console.log(response);  // You can retrieve the invitation ID here.

Added:

From Iamblichus's comment, I added try catch for the invitation requests both the teacher and student.

Modified script:

From:

for (var i = 0; i < Alast; i++) {
  var teachers = Avals[i][0];
  if (teachers) {
    var inviteteachers = Classroom.Invitations.create({
      "courseId": CourseId,
      "userId": teachers,
      "role": "TEACHER"
    })
    }
}

for (var j = 0; j < Blast; j++) {
  var students = Bvals[j][0];
  if (students) {
    var invitestudents = Classroom.Invitations.create({
      "courseId": CourseId,
      "userId": students,
      "role": "STUDENT"
    })
    }
}

To:

var response = [];
for (var j = 0; j < Blast; j++) {
  var students = Bvals[j][0];
  if (students) {
    try {
      var inviteteachers = Classroom.Invitations.create({"courseId": CourseId, "userId": teachers, "role": "TEACHER"});
      response.push(inviteteachers);
    } catch(e) {}
  }
}

for (var j = 0; j < Blast; j++) {
  var students = Bvals[j][0];
  if (students) {
    try {
      var invitestudents = Classroom.Invitations.create({"courseId": CourseId,"userId": students,"role": "STUDENT"});
      response.push(invitestudents);
    } catch(e) {}
  }
}
console.log(response);  // You can retrieve the invitation ID here.

Answer 2

ended up removing all the Response stuff as Im not that worried about logging it. Works with a Try - Catch loop. It seems theres enough common sense in Google Classroom already to prevent users being added as both Teacher and Student at the same time, so all good there.

Many thanks.

Final code:

function MultipleAccountInvite() {
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheetByName("1 Class Invite");

var CN = ss.getRange('B1').getValue();
var CourseId = parseInt(CN).toFixed();
Logger.log(CourseId);
var Avals = ss.getRange(3, 1,20).getValues();
var Alast = Avals.filter(String).length;
Logger.log(Avals)
Logger.log(Alast)
var Bvals = ss.getRange('B3:B').getValues();
var Blast = Bvals.filter(String).length;
Logger.log(Bvals)
Logger.log(Blast)

for (var i = 0; i < Alast; i++) {
  var teachers = Avals[i][0];
  if (teachers) {
    try {
    var inviteteachers = Classroom.Invitations.create({
      "courseId": CourseId,
      "userId": teachers,
      "role": "TEACHER"})
    } catch(e) {}
    }
  }

  for (var j = 0; j < Blast; j++) {
  var students = Bvals[j][0];
  if (students) {
    try {
    var invitestudents = Classroom.Invitations.create({
      "courseId": CourseId,
      "userId": students,
      "role": "STUDENT"})
    } catch(e) {}
    }
  }

}