instructure/canvas-lms · error · GraphQL::ExecutionError

assignment not found

Error message

assignment not found

What it means

CourseType.sections_connection resolves an optional assignment filter by looking up the assignment through assignment_scope_for_context(...).active.find. If the id does not resolve to a visible/active assignment for the current course+user, ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound is rescued and re-raised as 'assignment not found'.

Solutions

  1. Verify the assignment id belongs to the same course and is active before filtering
  2. Use the correct relay global ID for the assignment
  3. Remove the assignment_id filter if you want all sections
  4. Confirm the user has visibility to the assignment (it may be only_visible_to_overrides)

Example fix

// before
sections(filter: { assignmentId: "9999" })  # not in this course
// after
const id = assignment._id // id fetched from the same course
sections(filter: { assignmentId: toGlobalId('Assignment', id) })
Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

const assignment = assignmentsCache.find(a => a.id === filterAssignmentId && a.courseId === courseId)
if (!assignment) throw new Error('assignment not found before querying sections')

Type guard

function isAssignmentInCourse(a, courseId) { return !!a && a.courseId === courseId && a.state === 'active' }

Try / catch

try { await query(SECTIONS_QUERY) } catch (e) { if (e.message === 'assignment not found') { clearFilterAndRefetch() } else throw e }

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: course.sections(filter: { assignmentId: X }) where X is not an id of an active assignment scoped to that course for the requesting user (wrong course, deleted, unpublished, or only-visible-to-overrides assignment).

Common situations: Client caching an assignment id from a different course; assignment deleted or unpublished after the id was captured; ID/legacy-id mismatch when encoding relay global ids.

Understand the failure class

Background: Record Not Found Errors: "not found", RecordNotFound, and "was not found" — what they mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 28 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of instructure/canvas-lms@1c9f0bb801 (2026-09-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/7012d18ee6a6cb23. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at app/graphql/types/course_type.rb:260

        Loaders::CourseOutcomeAlignmentStatsLoader.load(course) if course&.grants_right?(current_user, session, :manage_outcomes)
      end
    end

    field :sections_connection, SectionType.connection_type, null: false do
      argument :filter, CourseSectionsFilterInputType, required: false
    end

    def sections_connection(filter: {})
      scope = course.active_course_sections

      if filter[:assignment_id]
        assignment = AbstractAssignment.assignment_scope_for_context(course).active.find(filter[:assignment_id])
        scope = scope.where(id: assignment.sections_for_assigned_students) if assignment.only_visible_to_overrides?
      end

      scope.order(CourseSection.best_unicode_collation_key("name"))
    rescue ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound
      raise GraphQL::ExecutionError, "assignment not found"
    end

    field :modules_connection, ModuleType.connection_type, null: true do
      argument :filter,
               Types::ModuleFilterInputType,
               required: false,
               description: "Filter modules by various criteria"
    end
    def modules_connection(filter: nil)
      preload_course_permissions.then do
        scope = course.modules_visible_to(current_user)

        if filter
          scope = apply_module_filters(scope, filter)
        end

        scope.order(:name)
      end

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