legiscanrr

The goal of legiscanrr is to provide tools in R to easily interact with the LegiScan API. You can use the API to retrieve information about legislations in US states and Congress, such as bill details, sponsors, full bill texts, roll call records and more.

This package contains two main groups of functions:

• Wrapper functions for LegiScan APi operations to retrieve information from LegiScan API.
  • API key from LegiScan is required. Register for a key here
• Data processing functions to parse information such as bill metadata, bill sponsor, roll call votes, from the JSON files retrieved via API or direct download
  • See documentation page for more details on the types of information we can extract.

For full reference of the package, see https://fanghuiz.github.io/legiscanrr/

Installation

You can install the development version from GitHub with:

install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("fanghuiz/legiscanrr")

Example

library(legiscanrr)

Get bill details via API using get_bill()

bill_example <- get_bill(bill_id = 230086)

head(bill_example)
#> $bill_id
#> [1] 230086
#> 
#> $change_hash
#> [1] "f29fef5ddcea1b65cee12357ac828383"
#> 
#> $session_id
#> [1] 122
#> 
#> $session
#> $session$session_id
#> [1] 122
#> 
#> $session$session_name
#> [1] "27th Legislature"
#> 
#> $session$session_title
#> [1] "27th Legislature"
#> 
#> $session$year_start
#> [1] 2011
#> 
#> $session$year_end
#> [1] 2012
#> 
#> $session$special
#> [1] 0
#> 
#> 
#> $url
#> [1] "https://legiscan.com/AK/bill/HB3/2011"
#> 
#> $state_link
#> [1] "http://www.legis.state.ak.us/basis/get_bill.asp?session=27&bill=HB3"

Extract bill metadata using parse_bill()

bill_meta <- parse_bill(bill_example)

str(bill_meta)
#> Classes 'tbl_df', 'tbl' and 'data.frame':    1 obs. of  24 variables:
#>  $ bill_id             : int 230086
#>  $ change_hash         : chr "f29fef5ddcea1b65cee12357ac828383"
#>  $ url                 : chr "https://legiscan.com/AK/bill/HB3/2011"
#>  $ state_link          : chr "http://www.legis.state.ak.us/basis/get_bill.asp?session=27&bill=HB3"
#>  $ status              : int 2
#>  $ status_date         : chr "2011-02-28"
#>  $ state               : chr "AK"
#>  $ state_id            : int 2
#>  $ bill_number         : chr "HB3"
#>  $ bill_type           : chr "B"
#>  $ bill_type_id        : chr "1"
#>  $ body                : chr "H"
#>  $ body_id             : int 13
#>  $ current_body        : chr "S"
#>  $ current_body_id     : int 14
#>  $ title               : chr "Requirements For Driver's License"
#>  $ description         : chr "An Act relating to issuance of driver's licenses."
#>  $ pending_committee_id: int 2149
#>  $ session_id          : int 122
#>  $ session_name        : chr "27th Legislature"
#>  $ session_title       : chr "27th Legislature"
#>  $ year_start          : int 2011
#>  $ year_end            : int 2012
#>  $ special             : int 0

Extract bill progress information using parse_bill_progress()

parse_bill_progress(bill_example)
#>          date event bill_id
#> 1: 2011-01-18     1  230086
#> 2: 2011-01-18     9  230086
#> 3: 2011-02-02    11  230086
#> 4: 2011-02-23    10  230086
#> 5: 2011-02-28     2  230086
#> 6: 2011-03-01     9  230086

Extract information about sponsors for this bill using parse_bill_sponsor()

sponsor <- parse_bill_sponsor(bill_example)

str(sponsor)
#> Classes 'data.table' and 'data.frame':   19 obs. of  9 variables:
#>  $ people_id        : int  6033 11587 11300 11299 11277 6071 6068 6067 6064 6063 ...
#>  $ party_id         : int  2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 ...
#>  $ party            : chr  "R" "R" "R" "R" ...
#>  $ name             : chr  "Carl Gatto" "Steve Thompson" "Lance Pruitt" "Eric Feige" ...
#>  $ sponsor_type_id  : int  0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
#>  $ sponsor_order    : int  0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
#>  $ committee_sponsor: int  0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
#>  $ committee_id     : chr  "0" "0" "0" "0" ...
#>  $ bill_id          : int  230086 230086 230086 230086 230086 230086 230086 230086 230086 230086 ...
#>  - attr(*, ".internal.selfref")=<externalptr>

Data structure

Dataset structure and keys for joining different tables.