How to set up Windows for using markdown2canvas

These instructions are tested on Windows 11 on February 26, 2024.

Get Canvas Credentials and Make Canvas Credential File

Your first step will need to be to get a Canvas API Key.

  1. On Canvas, navigate Accounts -> Settings

  2. Scroll to the button labeled + New Acces Token

  3. Add a description for yourself to know, later, what the access token is for and optionally add an expiration date. (I like to make a new one every semester, for safety.)

  4. Copy the text of the token (you won’t get to see this again) to a file that we will name canvas_credential_file.py.

  5. Create a variable in canvas_credential_file.py named API_KEY, whose value is the string that we just copied from canvas.

Additionally, add a second variable API_URL whose value is the string that is the general Canvas URL you use. For UWEC, this is ‘https://uweau.instructure.com/’.

Ultimately, your canvas_credential_file.py will contain the lines:

API_KEY = "stringofrandomcharacters"
API_URL = "https://uweau.instructure.com/"

Initial Setup - Using VS Code

  1. Install python via the Microsoft Store

  2. Install VS code and GitBash - at UW Eau Claire this is done via the software center, you might use the Microsoft Store for this step as well.

  3. Clone the markdown2canvas repo from github

  4. Open VS code, open GitBash terminal and run the command

pip install /path/to/markdown2canvas

Then also run the command

pip install lxml beautifulsoup4

Note that the default terminal that VSCode opens will be the Windows powershell, don’t use that.

Generate necessary global variables

  1. Run the following command to make a file called .bashrc and save the location of your canvas credential file in your home directory.

echo 'CANVAS_CREDENTIAL_FILE=h:\\path\\to\\canvas_credential_file.py' >> ~/.bashrc

Note that you should be using \ here as directory separators because you are using Windows. If you use / you run the risk of the operating system not understanding the path.

  1. Open a new git bash terminal and see if the following works:

echo $CANVAS_CREDENTIAL_FILE

If not, you might need to run the following command in your bash terminal:

source ~/.bashrc