Metadata-Version: 1.1
Name: united-states-congress
Version: 0.0.8
Summary: Public domain data collectors for the work of Congress, including legislation, amendments, and votes.
Home-page: https://github.com/unitedstates/congress
Author: United States
Author-email: test@replaceme.com
License: CC0-1.0
Description: ## unitedstates/congress
        
        Public domain code that collects data about the bills, amendments, roll call votes, and other core data about the U.S. Congress.
        
        Includes:
        
        * A data importing script for the [official bulk bill status data](https://github.com/usgpo/bill-status) from Congress, the official source of information on the life and times of legislation.
        
        * Scrapers for House and Senate roll call votes.
        
        * A scraper for GPO FDSys, the official repository for most legislative documents.
        
        * A defunct THOMAS scraper for presidential nominations in Congress.
        
        Read about the contents and schema in the [documentation](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress/wiki) in the github project wiki.
        
        For background on how this repository came to be, see [Eric's blog post](http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/08/20/a-modern-approach-to-open-data/).
        
        
        ### Setting Up
        
        This project is tested using Python 2.7.
        
        **System dependencies**
        
        On Ubuntu, you'll need `wget`, `pip`, and some support packages:
        
        ```bash
        sudo apt-get install git python-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libz-dev python-pip
        ```
        
        On OS X, you'll need developer tools installed ([XCode](https://developer.apple.com/xcode/)), and `wget`.
        
        ```bash
        brew install wget
        ```
        
        **Python dependencies**
        
        It's recommended you use a `virtualenv` (virtual environment) for development. The easiest way is install `virtualenv` and `virtualenvwrapper`, using `sudo` if necessary:
        
        ```bash
        sudo pip install virtualenv
        sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper
        ```
        
        Create a virtualenv for this project:
        
        ```bash
        mkvirtualenv congress
        ```
        
        And activate it before any development session using:
        
        ```bash
        workon congress
        ```
        
        Finally, with your virtual environment activated, install Python packages:
        
        ```bash
        pip install -r requirements.txt
        ```
        
        ### Collecting the data
        
        The general form to start the scraping process is:
        
            ./run <data-type> [--force] [other options]
        
        where data-type is one of:
        
        * `bills` (see [Bills](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress/wiki/bills)) and [Amendments](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress/wiki/amendments))
        * `votes` (see [Votes](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress/wiki/votes))
        * `nominations` (see [Nominations](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress/wiki/nominations))
        * `committee_meetings` (see [Committee Meetings](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress/wiki/committee-meetings))
        * `fdsys` (see [Bill Text](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress/wiki/bill-text))
        * `deepbills` (see [Bill Text](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress/wiki/bill-text))
        * `statutes` (see [Bills](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress/wiki/bills) and [Bill Text](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress/wiki/bill-text))
        
        To scrape bills, resolutions, and amendments from THOMAS, run:
        
        ```bash
        ./run fdsys --collections=BILLSTATUS
        ./run bills
        ```
        
        The bills script will output bulk data into a top-level `data` directory, then organized by Congress number, bill type, and bill number. Two data output files will be generated for each bill: a JSON version (data.json) and an XML version (data.xml).
        
        ### Common options
        
        Debugging messages are hidden by default. To include them, run with --log=info or --debug. To hide even warnings, run with --log=error.
        
        To get emailed with errors, copy config.yml.example to config.yml and fill in the SMTP options. The script will automatically use the details when a parsing or execution error occurs.
        
        The --force flag applies to all data types and supresses use of a cache for network-retreived resources.
        
        ### Data Output
        
        The script will cache downloaded pages in a top-level `cache` directory, and output bulk data in a top-level `data` directory.
        
        Two bulk data output files will be generated for each object: a JSON version (data.json) and an XML version (data.xml). The XML version attempts to maintain backwards compatibility with the XML bulk data that [GovTrack.us](https://www.govtrack.us) has provided for years. Add the --govtrack flag to get fully backward-compatible output using GovTrack IDs (otherwise the source IDs used for legislators is used).
        
        See the [project wiki](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress/wiki) for documentation on the output format.
        
        ### Contributing
        
        Pull requests with patches are awesome. Unit tests are strongly encouraged ([example tests](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress/blob/master/test/test_bill_actions.py)).
        
        The best way to file a bug is to [open a ticket](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress/issues).
        
        
        ### Running tests
        
        To run this project's unit tests:
        
        ```bash
        ./test/run
        ```
        
        ### Who's Using This Data
        
        The [Sunlight Foundation](http://sunlightfoundation.com) and [GovTrack.us](https://www.govtrack.us) are the two principal maintainers of this project.
        
        Both Sunlight and GovTrack operate APIs where you can get much of this data delivered over HTTP:
        
        * [GovTrack.us API](https://www.govtrack.us/developers/api)
        * [Sunlight Congress API](http://sunlightlabs.github.io/congress/)
        
        ## Public domain
        
        This project is [dedicated to the public domain](LICENSE). As spelled out in [CONTRIBUTING](CONTRIBUTING.md):
        
        > The project is in the public domain within the United States, and copyright and related rights in the work worldwide are waived through the [CC0 1.0 Universal public domain dedication](http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).
        
        > All contributions to this project will be released under the CC0 dedication. By submitting a pull request, you are agreeing to comply with this waiver of copyright interest.
        
        [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/unitedstates/congress.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/unitedstates/congress)
        
Keywords: government development data
Platform: UNKNOWN
Classifier: Development Status :: 3 - Alpha
Classifier: Intended Audience :: Developers
Classifier: Topic :: Utilities
Classifier: License :: CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 2.7
