[catsoop-dev] CAT-SOOP API Integration for MIT AppDev Project

[adam j hartz]

Hi Pedro,

Thanks for reaching out.

catsoop doesn't currently support OAuth, and I don't think it's
something I'd be interested in writing myself, but I'd be willing to
consult and to review a pull request if you wanted to implement it.

A couple of initial thoughts:

  * I won't accept code, documentation, or tests that were made (in
    whole or in part) by generative AI, so if you do want to submit a
    patch, please make sure everything was written by a human.

  * catsoop's notion of due dates is somewhat nebulous, and different
    classes handle things differently, so it might be hard to write
    something that generalizes to every class.

  * Each catsoop instance is generally separate from the others, so
    Octopi would need to be registered as a client to each subject's
    instance separately; students would need to go through that process
    once per subject.

  * Right now, API tokens give complete access to a user's account, so
    if we were going to make it easier to hand tokens to third-party
    applications, I would also want such an implementation to include
    some sort of mechanism for limiting the scope of each token (for
    example, only allowing certain API endpoints, only allowing read
    access, etc).

Other general guidelines for contributing to catsoop can be found at
https://catsoop.org/docs/contributing/hacking, and I'd be happy to chat
more if that would be helpful.

Thanks,
-Adam


On Thu, Oct 22, 2026 at 01:35:18AM +0000, Pedro Villafranco wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm an MIT undergraduate working on Octopi, a student-developed application under MIT AppDev that helps students organize assignments and deadlines across MIT learning platforms.
>
> We're currently exploring an integration with CAT-SOOP. I've been able to work with its existing API token system, but we'd like to make it possible for students to connect their accounts directly through OAuth rather than manually generating API tokens.
>
> Does CAT-SOOP currently support OAuth 2.0 for third party apps? If not, is this something we could help implement?
>
> Thank you,
> Pedro Villafranco

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