NEWS.md

In filibustr: Data Utilities for Congressional Research

filibustr 0.3.0 (2025-03-30)

Breaking changes

• MAJOR CHANGE: Redesigned the interface for reading from local files. Now, to read from a local file, specify the file path using local_path (#17).
• A given function call will now read data from either online or a local file, not try both. There is no longer an "online fallback" if a local file is not found.
• Filtering local files: when working with local files, you can download one big file, and filter that file to smaller datasets as needed - no need to make multiple slow downloads!
• The supported file types for local reading are: .csv, .dta, .tab, .tsv

Here is some example usage of the local_path argument, including the ability to filter local files:

## download large dataset
all_members <- get_voteview_members()
nrow(all_members)                       # 51036
levels(all_members$chamber)             # "President" "House"     "Senate"
range(all_members$congress)             # 1 119 (or the `current_congress()`)

## save to local file
tmp_csv <- tempfile(fileext = ".csv")
readr::write_csv(all_members, tmp_csv)

## read data from local file - much faster than downloading from online!
local_members <- get_voteview_members(local_path = tmp_csv)
nrow(local_members)                     # 51036

## read smaller datasets from the local file
senators <- get_voteview_members(chamber = "sen", local_path = tmp_csv)
nrow(senators)                          # 10125
levels(senators$chamber)                # "President" "Senate"

congresses_100_to_110 <- get_voteview_members(congress = 100:110, 
                                              local_path = tmp_csv)
nrow(congresses_100_to_110)             # 6008
range(congresses_100_to_110$congress)   # 100 110

house_117 <- get_voteview_members(chamber = "hr", congress = 117,
                                  local_path = tmp_csv)
nrow(house_117)                         # 457
levels(house_117$chamber)               # "President" "House"
range(house_117$congress)               # 117 117

• In the Voteview functions, an invalid congress now produces an error, instead of silently returning data for all Congresses.
• In get_les(), returned data frames now use more specific column types, such as integer for count data and logical for binary data (#10).
• NOTE: state abbreviations (columns state, st_name) and LES scores relative to expectation (columns expectation, expectation1, expectation2) are now factor variables.
• get_voteview_members(): fix factor levels in the state_abbrev column.
• In get_les(), 0- or 1-character strings for bioname are converted to NA.

New features

• {filibustr} now has a documentation website! You can visit it at https://feinleib.github.io/filibustr/ (#18).
• New get_voteview_cast_codes() provides the cast codes used in Voteview's member votes data (#13).
• New read_html_table() for reading HTML tables from online. It's a nice shortcut for a common {rvest} workflow that otherwise takes 3 functions. read_html_table() was previously an internal function, but it's useful enough that I think it should be exported, even if it's not a core functionality of {filibustr} (#20).

Minor improvements and bug fixes

• Improved error messages with cli::cli_abort() (#9).
• When reading data from online, now retry up to 3 times in case of HTTP errors.
• Fixes to online tests for CRAN.
• Removed dependencies: {crul}, {R.utils}, {tidyselect}.
• New dependencies: {cli}, {tools}.

filibustr 0.2.1 (2024-05-02)

Bug fixes

• Handle HTTP errors when using online connections (#12).

filibustr 0.2.0 (2024-03-01)

Breaking changes

• get_lhy_data() has been renamed to get_hvw_data().
• In get_voteview_*(), chamber and congress now come before local and local_dir. This matches the argument order in get_hvw_data() (#3).

New features

• New function get_les() retrieves Legislative Effectiveness Scores data from the Center for Effective Lawmaking (#5).

filibustr 0.1.1 (2024-02-13)

• Fixes for CRAN.

filibustr 0.1.0 (2024-02-01)

• Initial CRAN submission.

filibustr documentation built on April 4, 2025, 3:43 a.m.