Last_vote attribute in Bills JSON endpoint?

[mininternet]

Previously with Sunlight there was a last_vote attribute, which was very useful for determining whether to show a Votes button in the UI.

Without a flag now the Votes button will always be displayed, which isn't useful since most bills haven't been voted on, which makes the UI misleading.

Not sure what better way to know when to offer a Votes option, per Bill.

[dwillis]

@mininternet: Individual bill responses have a votes attribute that, if not empty, contains a list of votes on that bill, in reverse chronological order (see https://projects.propublica.org/api-docs/congress-api/bills/#get-a-specific-bill). Does that help, or were you looking for something else?

[mininternet]

@dwillis - Would this be the case for every Bill endpoint, i.e. bills by legislator, bills by subject/search, etc?

Checking for a zero length votes array would work well, but i know there are occasional differences in field structures between endpoints, so not sure if Votes are present everywhere.

[dwillis]

@mininternet currently it's only on the Specific Bill endpoint, so no. Sounds like a last_vote attribute or a has_votes boolean would be useful on all bill endpoints? Which would be preferable?

[mininternet]

@dwillis - With Sunlight it was a last_vote date value, which provided more info than just a boolean. But if this is problematic, a boolean would work well too.

[dwillis]

@mininternet it's not problematic. We'll add it to bill responses.

[mininternet]

Excellent, thanks!

[dwillis]

@mininternet We've added last_vote to bill responses and generally brought more of the bill responses in line with the bill lists responses.

[mininternet]

@dwillis - Great news, thanks!

I've had a couple of fires to put out, so haven't yet implemented, but will do so by this weekend. Feel free to close this comment.