pvsR (version 0.1.1)

Votes.getBillAction: Get detailed action information on a certain stage of the bill

Description

This function is a wrapper for the Votes.getBillAction() method of the PVS API Votes class which grabs detailed action information on a certain stage of the bill. The function sends a request with this method to the PVS API for all action 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

Votes.getBillAction(actionId)

Arguments

actionId

a character string or list of character strings with the action ID(s) (see references for details)

Value

• A data frame with a row for each action and columns with variables describing the action. The returned data frame contains a row for each action and columns with the following variables describing the action: action.billId, action.billNumber, action.actionId, action.category, action.categoryId, action.type, action.stateId, action.level, action.stage, action.outcome, action.rollNumber, action.yea, action.nay, action.voiceVote, action.title, action.officialTitle, action.highlight, action.synopsis, action.officialSynopsis, action.note.

References

http://api.votesmart.org/docs/Votes.html Use Votes.getBill() or Votes.getByOfficial() to get a list of action IDs.

Examples

# First, make sure your personal PVS API key is saved as character string in the pvs.key variable:
pvs.key <- "yourkey"
# get information about certain actions
actioninfo <- Votes.getBillAction(actionId=list(2575,18436,10194))
actioninfo