R/Votes.getBillActionVotes.R

In pvsR: An R package to interact with the Project Vote Smart API for scientific research

##' Get votes listed by candidate on a certain bill action
##' 
##' This function is a wrapper for the Votes.getBillActionVotes() method of the PVS API Votes class which provides votes listed by candidate on a certain bill action. The function sends a request with this method to the PVS API for all action 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.getBillActionVotes(actionId)
##' @param actionId a character string or list of character strings with the action ID(s) (see references for details)
##' @return A data frame with a row for each vote and columns with the following variables describing the vote:\cr votes.vote*.candidateId,\cr votes.vote*.candidateName,\cr votes.vote*.officeParties,\cr votes.vote*.action.
##' @references http://api.votesmart.org/docs/Votes.html\cr
##' Use Votes.getBill() or Votes.getByOfficial() to get a list of action IDs.
##' @author Ulrich Matter <ulrich.matter-at-unibas.ch>
##' @examples
##' # First, make sure your personal PVS API key is saved as character string in the pvs.key variable:
##' \dontrun{pvs.key <- "yourkey"}
##' # get votes of a certain candidate on a certain action
##' \dontrun{actionvote <- Votes.getBillActionVotes(list(31712,28686))}
##' \dontrun{actionvote}
##' @export






Votes.getBillActionVotes <-
function (actionId) {
  
  
# internal function

Votes.getBillActionVotes.basic <- function (.actionId) {
  
request <-  "Votes.getBillActionVotes?"
inputs  <-  paste("&actionId=",.actionId, sep="")
output  <-  pvsRequest(request,inputs)
output$actionId  <- .actionId  
output

}



# Main function  
  output.list <- lapply(actionId, FUN= function (b) {
    
      Votes.getBillActionVotes.basic(.actionId=b)
           
        
    }
  )

# which list entry has the most columns, how many are these?
coln <- which.is.max(sapply(output.list, ncol));
max.cols <- max(sapply(output.list, ncol));

# give all list entries (dfs in list) the same number of columns and the same names
output.list2 <- lapply(output.list, function(x){
if (ncol(x) < max.cols) x <- data.frame(cbind(matrix(NA, ncol=max.cols-ncol(x), nrow = 1, ),x),row.names=NULL)
names(x) <- names(output.list[[coln]])
x
})

output <- do.call("rbind",output.list2)
output


}