How to Integrate Retool with Edmodo

Edmodo's service was completely shut down in September 2022. The platform's data was not automatically migrated to any successor — teachers and schools had to manually export their content and set up accounts on new platforms. If you are building a Retool dashboard that was previously designed to integrate with Edmodo, you will need to redirect it to whichever platform your school or district migrated to. The three most common Edmodo migration targets are: Google Classroom — the default choice for schools already using Google Workspace for Education. Google Classroom provides a REST API via the Google Classroom API v1, with OAuth 2.0 authentication. It covers courses, students, teachers, assignments (coursework), submissions, and announcements. Canvas LMS — widely used in higher education and increasingly in K-12 districts. Canvas provides a comprehensive REST API with Bearer token authentication (personal access tokens or OAuth). Schoology — popular in U.S. K-12 districts, now owned by PowerSchool. Schoology provides a two-legged OAuth API for accessing courses, groups, and grades. For the purposes of this guide, Google Classroom is the primary target as it requires only a Google Workspace for Education account with no additional licensing beyond what most schools already have. The API patterns described here can be adapted to Canvas or Schoology by substituting the base URL, authentication method, and endpoint paths.

To connect Retool to Google Classroom, you need either a service account with domain-wide delegation (for server-to-server access to all courses in a Google Workspace domain) or an OAuth 2.0 client (for individual user access). For a school-wide Retool dashboard that an administrator uses, the service account approach is recommended. Go to console.cloud.google.com and create or select a Google Cloud project. Enable the Google Classroom API under APIs & Services → Library. Navigate to APIs & Services → Credentials → Create Credentials → Service Account. Give the service account a descriptive name like 'Retool Classroom Integration'. After creation, click the service account → Keys tab → Add Key → Create new key → JSON. Download the JSON key file securely. Now enable domain-wide delegation: in the Google Admin Console (admin.google.com), go to Security → Access and data control → API controls → Manage Domain Wide Delegation → Add new. Enter the service account's client ID (found in the JSON key file as 'client_id') and add the scopes: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/classroom.courses.readonly, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/classroom.rosters.readonly, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/classroom.coursework.students.readonly. For write access, add the corresponding non-readonly scopes. Once delegation is configured, you can generate Bearer tokens for any user in the domain by using the service account JSON key to sign a JWT and exchange it for an access token. In Retool, you will implement this token generation as a JavaScript query or use a shorter-lived token obtained via the OAuth Playground (oauth2.googleapis.com/tokeninfo) for initial testing.

1{
2  "base_url": "https://classroom.googleapis.com/v1",
3  "auth_type": "Bearer token (Google OAuth2 access token)",
4  "required_scopes": [
5    "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/classroom.courses.readonly",
6    "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/classroom.rosters.readonly",
7    "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/classroom.coursework.students.readonly"
8  ],
9  "token_endpoint": "https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token"
10}

In Retool, navigate to the Resources tab and click '+ Create new'. Select 'REST API' from the connector list. In the Name field, enter 'Google Classroom API'. For the Base URL, enter https://classroom.googleapis.com/v1. For Authentication, select 'Bearer token' and paste the Google OAuth 2.0 access token you obtained from the OAuth Playground or your service account flow. Add default headers: Content-Type set to application/json and Accept set to application/json. Click 'Save resource'. Note that Google OAuth access tokens expire after 1 hour. For a production Retool app, you need to automate token refresh using a Retool Workflow that runs a JavaScript block to generate a new token from your service account credentials and updates the resource configuration variable. Store the service account JSON key securely as a secret configuration variable (Settings → Configuration Variables → mark as secret) and reference it in the token refresh workflow. For Canvas LMS instead: create a REST API Resource with Base URL https://your-institution.instructure.com/api/v1, authentication set to Bearer token using your Canvas API access token from Account → Profile → New Access Token. For Schoology instead: the API uses two-legged OAuth 1.0, which requires signing requests similarly to the Duo Security pattern — create a REST API Resource with the base URL https://api.schoology.com/v1 and implement OAuth signing in JavaScript queries.

With the resource configured, build the core data queries for your education dashboard. Create a getCourses query: Method GET, path /courses. Add URL parameters: courseStates set to ACTIVE to show only active courses, pageSize set to 50. Name this query getCourses. This returns a list of all courses accessible by the authenticated user (or all courses in the domain if using a service account with domain-wide delegation). Create a getStudents query: Method GET, path /courses/{{ coursesTable.selectedRow.id }}/students. Add pageSize set to 100. Name this query getStudents — this will fire when a course row is selected. Create a getCourseWork query: Method GET, path /courses/{{ coursesTable.selectedRow.id }}/courseWork. Add pageSize set to 30 and orderBy set to updateTime desc to get recent assignments first. Run each query to inspect the response structure. Google Classroom returns paginated responses with a nextPageToken field for pagination and a top-level array named courses, students, or courseWork depending on the endpoint. The course object includes id, name, section, descriptionHeading, courseState, ownerId, and a teacherFolder reference. Student objects include userId, profile.name, and profile.emailAddress. CourseWork objects include id, title, dueDate, dueTime, maxPoints, and workType.

1{
2  "method": "GET",
3  "path": "/courses",
4  "params": {
5    "courseStates": "ACTIVE",
6    "pageSize": "50"
7  }
8}

With the queries working, construct the classroom management dashboard UI. Drag a Table component onto the canvas and set its Data source to a transformer on getCourses. Write a transformer that maps each course to a flat row with id, name, section, and courseState. Add a second Table below or to the right, set its Data source to a transformer on getStudents, and configure it to refresh when a course is selected in the first table. The getStudents query should have its trigger set to depend on coursesTable.selectedRow.id — set 'Run query on any component change that it depends on'. Add a Text component header showing 'Students in: {{ coursesTable.selectedRow.name || "Select a course" }}'. For assignment submission tracking, create a getSubmissions query: Method GET, path /courses/{{ coursesTable.selectedRow.id }}/courseWork/{{ courseWorkTable.selectedRow.id }}/studentSubmissions with pageSize set to 100. Add a third Table for submissions showing student name, submission state (TURNED_IN, RETURNED, CREATED, RECLAIMED_BY_STUDENT), late status, and assigned grade. Wire the three tables so clicking a course populates students and coursework, and clicking a coursework item shows submissions. For complex multi-platform dashboards integrating Google Classroom with Canvas or Schoology alongside internal SIS data, RapidDev's team can help architect the full solution.

1// Transformer: flatten Google Classroom course list
2const courses = data.courses || [];
3return courses.map(course => ({
4  id: course.id,
5  name: course.name,
6  section: course.section || 'No Section',
7  description: course.descriptionHeading || '',
8  state: course.courseState,
9  enrollment_code: course.enrollmentCode || 'N/A',
10  creation_time: course.creationTime
11    ? new Date(course.creationTime).toLocaleDateString()
12    : 'N/A',
13  update_time: course.updateTime
14    ? new Date(course.updateTime).toLocaleDateString()
15    : 'N/A'
16}));