CandidateBio.getDetailedBio: Get a candidate's detailed 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.getDetailedBio() method of the PVS API CandidateBio class which grabs the detailed biographical information for each candidate. 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.getDetailedBio(candidateId)

candidateId

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

A list with several data frames containing the elements of CandidateBio.getBio(), and expands upon:
bio.candidate.education.degree,
bio.candidate.education.field,
bio.candidate.education.school,
bio.candidate.education.span,
bio.candidate.education.gpa,
bio.candidate.education.fullText,
bio.candidate.profession.title,
bio.candidate.profession.organization,
bio.candidate.profession.span,
bio.candidate.profession.special,
bio.candidate.profession.district,
bio.candidate.profession.fullText,
bio.candidate.political.title,
bio.candidate.political.organization,
bio.candidate.political.span,
bio.candidate.political.special,
bio.candidate.political.district,
bio.candidate.political.fullText,
bio.candidate.congMembership.title,
bio.candidate.congMembership.organization,
bio.candidate.congMembership.span,
bio.candidate.congMembership.special,
bio.candidate.congMembership.district,
bio.candidate.congMembership.fullText,
bio.candidate.orgMembership.title,
bio.candidate.orgMembership.organization,
bio.candidate.orgMembership.span,
bio.candidate.orgMembership.special,
bio.candidate.orgMembership.district,
bio.candidate.orgMembership.fullText.

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 main biographical data on Barack Obama and Mitt Romney
## Not run: bio <- CandidateBio.getDetailedBio(list(9490,21942))
## Not run: head(bio$profession)
## Not run: head(bio$orgMembership)