CandidateBio.getAddlBio: Get a candidate's additional biographical information
In umatter/pvsR: Interact with the Project Vote Smart API for Scientific Research

Description Usage Arguments Value Author(s) References Examples

This function is a wrapper for the CandidateBio.getAddlBio() method of the PVS API CandidateBio class which grabs the extended biographical information for each candidate that has one. The function sends a request with this method to the PVS API for all candidate-IDs given as a function input, extracts the XML values from the returned XML file(s) and returns them arranged in one data frame.

1	CandidateBio.getAddlBio(candidateId)

candidateId

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

A data frame with a row for each candidate and columns with the following variables describing the candidate:
addlBio.candidate.shortTitle,
addlBio.candidate.firstName,
addlBio.candidate.nickName,
addlBio.candidate.middleName,
addlBio.candidate.lastName,
addlBio.candidate.suffix,
addlBio.additional.item*.name,
addlBio.additional.item*.data

Ulrich Matter <ulrich.matter-at-unibas.ch>

http://api.votesmart.org/docs/CandidateBio.html
Use Candidates.getByOfficeState(), Candidates.getByOfficeTypeState(), Candidates.getByLastname(), Candidates.getByLevenshtein(), Candidates.getByElection(), Candidates.getByDistrict() or Candidates.getByZip() to get a list of candidate IDs.
See also: Matter U, Stutzer A (2015) pvsR: An Open Source Interface to Big Data on the American Political Sphere. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0130501. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0130501

# First, make sure your personal PVS API key is saved as an option
# (options("pvs.key" = "yourkey")) or in the pvs.key variable:
## Not run: pvs.key <- "yourkey"
# get additional biographical data on Barack Obama 
## Not run: obama <- CandidateBio.getAddlBio(9490)
## Not run: obama
# get additional biographical data on Barack Obama and Mitt Romney
## Not run: onr <- CandidateBio.getAddlBio(list(9490,21942))
## Not run: onr