Bills become law information not coming in API

[manimittal15]

Hi Team,

While analyzing the bills API I observed that once bill becomes Law or signed by president there is no entry in bill collection API.
As an example last version we can found for bill 115S2248 is ENR. There is no entry for it becoming the law.
API referred here is : https://api.govinfo.gov/collections/BILLS/2018-12-03T00:00:00Z/2019-01-10T23:59:59Z?offset=0&pageSize=10000&api_key=DEMO_KEY

Could you please tell if this is the issue with API or there will be no entry for bill becoming law.
If there will not be any entry for bill becoming law, how to track its status?

Thanks,
Mani Mittal

[jonquandt]

@manimittal15 -- the easiest way to track this is to use the Congressional Bill Status package associated with the individual bills -- there is a link to the billstatus in each BILLS package summary.

For example,
https://api.govinfo.gov/packages/BILLS-115s2248enr/summary?api_key=DEMO_KEY

{
    "title": "An Act To amend title 38, United States Code, to authorize the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to provide certain burial benefits for spouses and children of veterans who are buried in tribal cemeteries, and for other purposes.",
    "shortTitle": [{
        "type": "measure",
        "title": "Veterans Benefits and Transition Act of 2018"
    }],
    "collectionCode": "BILLS",
    "collectionName": "Congressional Bills",
    "category": "Bills and Statutes",
    "dateIssued": "2018-12-21",
    "detailsLink": "https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/BILLS-115s2248enr",
    "packageId": "BILLS-115s2248enr",
    "download": {
        "txtLink": "https://api.govinfo.gov/packages/BILLS-115s2248enr/htm",
        "xmlLink": "https://api.govinfo.gov/packages/BILLS-115s2248enr/xml",
        "pdfLink": "https://api.govinfo.gov/packages/BILLS-115s2248enr/pdf",
        "modsLink": "https://api.govinfo.gov/packages/BILLS-115s2248enr/mods",
        "premisLink": "https://api.govinfo.gov/packages/BILLS-115s2248enr/premis",
        "zipLink": "https://api.govinfo.gov/packages/BILLS-115s2248enr/zip"
    },
    "related": {
        "billStatusLink": "https://www.govinfo.gov/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/115/s/BILLSTATUS-115s2248.xml"
    },

That billStatusLink contains xml with information on actions related to the bill, showing changes in version, etc.

For this example, the latestAction is:

<latestAction>
    <links />
    <actionDate>2018-12-31</actionDate>
    <text>Became Public Law No: 115-407.</text>
</latestAction>

This would let you know that you need to get the following package: PLAW-115publ407

Alternatively, you can access BILLSTATUS information via the API -- using BILLSTATUS as the collection. If you know the bill citation, you can create the packages link directly.

In this case, PLAW-115publ407 is not available in the system yet, so is not available via the API. Here's a full set of examples for a 116th Congress Bill, Bill Status, and Public Law

https://api.govinfo.gov/packages/BILLS-116s24enr/summary
https://api.govinfo.gov/packages/BILLSTATUS-116s24/summary
https://api.govinfo.gov/packages/PLAW-116publ1/summary

Packages are self-describing and have metadata based on the content within the package. On the UI, we have made some additional integrations available via our related documents feature to help show the relationships between different documents within the system, and this is on the roadmap to expose via the API as well. See #2