Using Connect Enterprise Web Services

Training > Find courses and curriculums

Find courses and curriculums

Most XML API actions that work with courses and curriculums require the sco-id of the course or curriculum. You often need to locate the sco-id dynamically, before you call another action, without knowing the exact name of the SCO.

Use these best practices to make searching for training SCOs efficient:

• Create specialized folders within the Shared Training folder for storing courses and curriculums. You can do this in Connect Enterprise Manager, or you can use the XML API, in which the Shared Training folder is named courses.
• Use these folders to store various categories of courses and curriculums, such as Marketing Training or Sales Training.
• Use a flat structure in the specialized folders, storing courses and curriculums one level deep.

This directory structure is also recommended when you want to display a list of all courses and curriculums (or all those in a subject area) and allow users to enroll themselves.

If you are working in Enterprise Manager, you can find the sco-id of a course or curriculum by navigating to it, clicking its URL, and taking the value of sco-id from the browser URL. You can also locate the sco-id from an application, using the XML API.

Find the sco-id of a course or curriculum

1. Call sco-shortcuts:

   https://example.com/api/xml?action=sco-shortcuts
   

2. Parse the response for the sco-id of the courses folder:

   <sco tree-id="624528" sco-id="624528" type="courses">
     <domain-name>http://example.com</domain-name> 
   </sco>
   

   You cannot use a filter with sco-shortcuts, but you can parse the response for the sco element that has type=courses.

3. Call sco-contents, passing the sco-id of the courses folder and filtering for your specialized training folders:

   https://example.com/api/xml?action=sco-contents&sco-id=624528
               &filter-name=Sales Training
   

4. You can use filter-name, filter-url-path, another exact match filter, or a date filter. However, be careful when using filter-like-name, as it might affect server performance.
5. You can also get the sco-id of your specialized training folder from the browser URL in Enterprise Manager and pass it to sco-contents.
6. Parse the response for the sco-id of your specialized training folder:

   <sco sco-id="2007122244" source-sco-id="" folder-id="624528"
           type="folder" icon="folder" display-seq="0" is-folder="1">
   

7. Call sco-contents, passing it the sco-id of the specialized training folder and adding a filter that identifies the course or curriculum:

   https://example.com/api/xml?action=sco-contents
           &sco-id=2007122244&filter-name=Java 201
   

8. You can call sco-contents, rather than sco-expanded-contents, if all courses and curriculums are stored at the top level of your specialized training folder. This improves performance.
9. You can define custom fields for SCOs if it helps you identify them in searches (see "Create custom fields").
10. Parse the sco elements in the response for the sco-id of the course or curriculum:

    <sco depth="2" sco-id="2006745673" folder-id="2006745671" type="content"
                icon="course" lang="en" source-sco-id="2006744233" 
                display-seq="1" source-sco-type="0">
            <name>All About Web Communities</name> 
            <url-path>/p33096345/</url-path> 
            <description>Web 2.0 course</description> 
            <date-created>2006-06-12T14:48:25.870-07:00</date-created> 
            <date-modified>2006-06-12T14:48:25.870-07:00</date-modified> 
    </sco>
    

List all courses or curriculums available

1. Get the sco-id of a specialized training folder you have created (see "Find the sco-id of a course or curriculum").

   You can also get the sco-id by navigating to the folder in Enterprise Manager, clicking its URL, and reading the sco-id in the browser URL.

2. Call sco-contents, passing the folder's sco-id:

   https://example.com/api/xml?action=sco-contents&sco-id=2006258748
   

   The best practice is to create the specialized training folders one level deep. By doing so, you can call sco-contents rather than sco-expanded-contents. This gives better performance.

3. Parse the response for name, url-path, or any values you want to display:

   <sco sco-id="2007035246" source-sco-id="2006334909" 
           folder-id="2006258748" type="content" icon="course" 
               display-seq="0" is-folder="0">
       <name>Java 101</name> 
       <url-path>/java101/</url-path> 
       <date-begin>2006-07-20T17:15:00.000-07:00</date-begin> 
       <date-modified>2006-07-20T17:21:38.860-07:00</date-modified> 
   </sco>
   

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