pvsR (version 0.1.1)

Votes.getBillsByYearState: Get a list of bills according to year and state

Description

This function is a wrapper for the Votes.getBillsByYearState() method of the PVS API Votes class which returns a list of bills that fit the year and state input. The function sends a request with this method to the PVS API for all years and state 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.getBillsByYearState(year, stateId, all=FALSE)

Arguments

year

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

stateId

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

all

a logical indicator; if TRUE data on all possible combinations of the stateId and year are returned, if FALSE (default) only the exact combinations (see example)

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.

Examples

# First, make sure your personal PVS API key is saved as character string in the pvs.key variable:
pvs.key <- "yourkey"
# get a data frame of bills according to all year and state combinations
bills <- Votes.getBillsByYearState(year=list(2011,2012),
stateId=list("NY","NJ"), all=TRUE)
bills
# get a data frame of bills according to the exact year and state combinations
# (i.e., 2011/"NY", 2012/"NJ")
bills <- Votes.getBillsByYearState(year=list(2011,2012),
stateId=list("NY","NJ"), all=FALSE)
bills