pvsR (version 0.1.1)

Votes.getBillsByCategoryYearState: Get a list of bills according to category, year and state

Description

This function is a wrapper for the Votes.getBillsByCategoryYearState() method of the PVS API Votes class which grabs a list of bills according to category, year and state. The function sends a request with this method to the PVS API for all years, state and category 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.getBillsByCategoryYearState(year, stateId,
    categoryId)

Arguments

year

a character string or list of character strings with the year ID(s)

stateId

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

categoryId

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

Value

• A data frame with a row for each bill and columns with variables describing the bill. The returned data frame contains a row for each bill and columns with the following variables describing the bill: bills.bill*.billId, bills.bill*.billNumber, bills.bill*.title, bills.bill*.type.

References

http://api.votesmart.org/docs/Votes.html Use State.getStateIDs() to get a list of state IDs. Use Votes.getCategories() or Rating.getCandidateRating() to get a list of category IDs.

Examples

# First, make sure your personal PVS API key is saved as character string in the pvs.key variable:
pvs.key <- "yourkey"
# get a list of bills in a certain category, year and state
bills <- Votes.getBillsByCategoryYearState(as.list(2010:2012),"NY",10)
bills