UWaterloo AddCourse

This python package allows one to easily interact with the University of Waterloo's QUEST system to easily add a course. It does so by continuously querying the QUEST servers to add you into the given course until it succeeds.

Both Python 2 and Python 3 are supported, although Python 3 support requires 2to3 but that will be handled automatically by setup.py on installation.


There are currently two resources from which you can install UWaterloo AddCourse: the first is directly from the repository and the second is from PyPi.

The Repository

You can install this package from source using:

git clone https://github.com/kcolford/uwaterloo-addcourse.git
cd uwaterloo-addcourse
python setup.py install

Note that when you install in this way, you will be getting the development version, not the official stable release (although it should still work as documented).


Using easy_install, you just have to invoke:

easy_install uwaterloo-addcourse

You can use pip to install this package with just:

pip install uwaterloo-addcourse

You can also navigate to our PyPi page and choose one of the download links at the bottom.


There are two ways to use this API: the command line and the python interpreter. Note that when using the interpreter, you have more control over the queries you would have when using the command line. Although the command line is far more user friendly.

Command Line

To add a class from the command line, simply invoke the helper script like so:

user@computer:~/$ addcourse
Desired Course: cs246
QUEST ID: jsmith

Optional command line arguments to addcourse are as follows

-h, --help show this help message and exit
--version show program's version number and exit
-c COURSE, --course COURSE
 the course to try getting in to
-u USERID, --userid USERID
 the userid to login as

Python Interpreter

Simply write a script like so:

#! /usr/bin/env python

from addcourse import *

addcourse('jsmith', 'password123', numbers('cs246'))

Note that the call to numbers fetches a list of class numbers that correspond to the given course code (in this case 'cs246'). You can then use a splicing or other list manipulations to delete classes you don't want or add alternative classes that you do want. See pydoc addcourse for more information.


Development on UWaterloo AddCourse is relatively simple. We use GitHub and so all additions or improvements should be done through a pull request. Improvements of any kind will be gladly accepted.

Our current direction is looking into the following:

License and Disclaimer

Copyright (C) 2015 Kieran Colford

This file is part of UWaterloo-AddCourse.



You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with UWaterloo-AddCourse. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.


Mark Petrick, for the support that inspired this project.