pvsR (version 0.1.1)

Votes.getBillsBySponsorCategory: Get a list of bills according to sponsor(candidate) and category

Description

This function is a wrapper for the Votes.getBillsBySponsorCategory() method of the PVS API Votes class which grabs a list of bills that fit the sponsor's candidateId and category. The function sends a request with this method to the PVS API for all candidate 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.getBillsBySponsorCategory(categoryId, candidateId)

Arguments

categoryId

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

candidateId

a character string or list of character strings with the candidate 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 Votes.getCategories() to get a list of category IDs. Use Candidates.getByOfficeState(), Candidates.getByOfficeTypeState(), Candidates.getByLastname(), Candidates.getByLevenshtein(), Candidates.getByElection(), Candidates.getByDistrict() or Candidates.getByZip() to get a list of candidate 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 for a certain candidate and category
bills <- Votes.getBillsBySponsorCategory(as.list(1:50),107800)
bills