Blue State Digital Python API Client

A Python SDK for the Blue State Digital API. Stay Progressive.

Requirements

• Python 2.7+
• Python 3.3+

Installing

Install via PyPI.

$ pip install bluestatedigital-api

Using the library

Configuring Your API User

Before you can use the Tools API Library, you'll need to configure an API user in the Tools. You can edit an existing user or create a new one from the "Administrator Tools > Manage API Users" page. The api_id and secret are taken directly from the Manage API Users page.

API Users in the Tools are granted granular permissions, and can be configured to access - or be prevented from accessing - each API endpoint. You can find a complete list of Tools API endpoints here.

Using the library

Basic usage

from bsdapi import BsdApiClient

# instantiate the API Client
client = new BsdApiClient(
    'MY_API_ID',
    'MY_API_SECRET',
    'https://my.tools.url.net/'
)

# list constituent groups
resp = client.get('cons_group/list_constituent_groups')

print resp.status   # 200
print resp.content  # XML-encoded response body

The API library offers convenience methods for get, post, put, and delete requests that shadow the native requests methods of the same name. The main difference is that the BSD API sets a custom authorization driver using requests.AuthBase that automatically generates the api signing parameters (api_ts, api_ver, and api_mac) behind the scenes on each request.

Handling Deferred Responses

By default, the BSD API library will block on a deferred response (202 status), polling for 30 seconds, at three second intervals until the response is resolved, or throwing an exception if a 200 status response is not received in that time. There are a number of ways that you can control this behavior.

# 1. turn off blocking entirely. You'll need to make subsequent requests to
#    the /get_deferred_results endpoint to ensure that your requests were
#    processed successfully.
client.block_on_deferred_response = False

# 2. wait longer between deferral polls
client.deferred_poll_interval = 10  # interval in seconds

# 3. allow more poll attempts
client.deferred_result_max_attempts = 20

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. Issues can be filed in Github or by emailing help@bluestatedigital.com. Please include your Python version, along with a code sample that allows us to reproduce your error.

Changelog

3.0

• Removed REPL-style API explorer
• Removed custom logging and message factories - use stdlib logging module via requests.
• Now uses requests, the excellent python HTTP library.
• Removed convenience methods - endpoints are called directly by providing the URL path, body, and query parameters.
• Removed custom BsdApiResponse object. All API responses are now instanes of requests.Response.
• Published on PyPI for improved install experience.