Submit an assignment

Use this to turn in work from the terminal — as text, a file upload, or a URL — with a preview before anything is sent.

Outputs in the guides were captured from real runs of canvas-cli against a Canvas instance for a fictional student, Alex Rivera. IDs, names, and dates will differ in your account.

Prerequisites

A working connection (canvas auth test succeeds — see Getting started) and the course plus assignment IDs (canvas assignments list --course COURSE_ID, or Check what's due).

1. Check what the assignment accepts

Assignments only accept certain submission types, and the CLI refuses mismatches. Look at the Types: line first:

canvas assignments get --course 101 202

ID:        202
Name:      Problem Set 4: Recursion
Course ID: 101
Points:    50
Published: true
Due At:    2026-08-28T23:59:00Z
Types:     online_text_entry, online_upload

This assignment accepts text entries and file uploads. The type must also be one the CLI supports: online_text_entry (--text), online_upload (--file), or online_url (--url). Quizzes (online_quiz) must be taken in the Canvas web UI.

2. Preview the submission

Build the submission with --dry-run first. Nothing is sent:

canvas assignments submit --course 101 202 \
  --text "Exercise 1: ...base case is the empty list... Exercise 2: see attached reasoning." \
  --dry-run

DRY RUN: POST /api/v1/courses/101/assignments/202/submissions
Resource IDs: 101, 202
Payload: type=online_text_entry body={"submission_type":"online_text_entry","body":"Exercise 1: ...base case is the empty list... Exercise 2: see attached re...
No mutation sent.

The preview shows the exact request that would be made. Long bodies are truncated in the preview only.

3. Submit

Re-run with --confirm:

canvas assignments submit --course 101 202 \
  --text "Exercise 1: ...base case is the empty list... Exercise 2: see attached reasoning." \
  --confirm

Submission submitted (ID: 9001, state: submitted)

4. Verify what Canvas recorded

canvas submissions get --course 101 --assignment 202 --user self

ID:             9001
User ID:        61001
Assignment ID:  202
State:          submitted
Submitted At:   2026-08-21T14:32:11Z
Late:           false
Missing:        false

State: submitted with a Submitted At timestamp confirms Canvas accepted it. Once graded, Score appears here too.

Submitting a file instead

Same pattern — preview, then confirm. The file is uploaded through Canvas's upload flow, then attached to the submission:

canvas assignments submit --course 101 202 --file ./ps4-recursion.pdf --dry-run
canvas assignments submit --course 101 202 --file ./ps4-recursion.pdf --confirm

Submission submitted (ID: 9001, state: submitted)

Submitting a URL

For assignments whose Types: include online_url:

canvas assignments submit --course 101 205 --url https://github.com/alex-rivera/cs101-portfolio --confirm

Submission submitted (ID: 9001, state: submitted)

If the type doesn't match, the CLI stops you

Submitting a URL to an assignment that doesn't accept one fails before any request is made:

canvas assignments submit --course 101 202 --url https://example.com/demo --confirm

Error: assignment 202 does not accept online_url submission (allowed: online_text_entry, online_upload)

Next steps

• Check what's due — find the next thing to submit
• Safety model — how --dry-run, --confirm, and --read-only interact
• Set CANVAS_READ_ONLY=1 in your shell to explore without any risk of writes