Using twfy to access TheyWorkForYou

# real API access requires a key so these are prefetched 
# results from June 23, 2017
load('prefetched.rda')

In this vignette we use twfy to take a look at the MP for Keighley, West Yorkshire.

library(twfy)

We can get its detailed by name or by any postcode

keighley <- getConstituency("Keighley")

Who is the current MP? This time we'll use the postcode lookup

mp <- getMP(postcode="BD21 2DH")

Keighley's MP is

mp$full_name

He's a member of the Labour Party

mp$party

and since we're in England he's in the House of Commons, represented as 1.

mp$house

We can find him with two identifiers, the identifier for his current term in office

mp$member_id

but more lastingly by his person id

mp$person_id

With person_id we can get the details of all of his spells in the House of Commons like this

mp_per <- getPerson(mp$person_id)

Now, what's he been talking about in Parliamentary debates?

mp_talk <- getDebates(person=mp$person_id)

Debate results are fairly structured objects

names(mp_talk)
names(mp_talk$info) # what we've got to work with

the output is paged, so there are

mp_talk$info$total_results

entries, of which we are seeing from

mp_talk$info$results_per_page

counting from

mp_talk$info$first_result

to get the second page, we'd call getDebates again specifying page=2.

Let's take a look at the first recorded entry

first_entry <- mp_talk$rows[1,]
first_entry$hdate

clarifying an important issue

first_entry$body

The speaker field embeds a data.frame with the speaker's details, from which we note that he was not representing Keighley at that time but rather

first_entry$speaker$constituency


Try the twfy package in your browser

Any scripts or data that you put into this service are public.

twfy documentation built on May 2, 2019, 4:16 a.m.