pvsR (version 0.1.1)

Leadership.getPositions: Get leadership positions by state and office

Description

This function is a wrapper for the Leadership.getPositions() method of the PVS API Leadership class which returns leadership positions by state and office. The function sends a request with this method to the PVS API for all state and office IDs given as a function input, extracts the XML values from the returned XML file(s) and returns them arranged in one data frame.

Usage

Leadership.getPositions(stateId="NA", officeId=NULL)

Arguments

stateId

(optional) a character string or list of character strings with the state ID(s) (default: NA) (see references for details)

officeId

(optional) a character string or list of character strings with the office ID(s) (default: All) (see references for details)

Value

• A data frame with a row for each leadership position and columns with variables describing the position. The returned data frame contains a row for each leadership position and columns with the following variables describing the position: leadership.position*.leadershipId, leadership.position*.name, leadership.position*.officeId, leadership.position*.officeName.

References

http://api.votesmart.org/docs/Leadership.html Use State.getStateIDs() to get a list of state IDs. See http://api.votesmart.org/docs/semi-static.html for a list of office IDs or use Office.getOfficesByType(), Office.getOfficesByLevel(), Office.getOfficesByTypeLevel() or Office.getOfficesByBranchLevel() to get a list of office ID(s).

Examples

# First, make sure your personal PVS API key is saved as character string in the pvs.key variable:
pvs.key <- "yourkey"
# get leadership positions by state ID and office ID
positions <- Leadership.getPositions(list("AL","FL"),8)
positions