Votes.getCategories: Get a list of categories that contain released bills...
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 Votes.getCategories() method of the PVS API Votes class which dumps categories that contain released bills according to year and state. The function sends a request with this method to the PVS API for all years and state 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	Votes.getCategories(year, stateId="NA")

`year`	a character string or list of character strings with the year(s)
`stateId`	(optional) a character string or list of character strings with the state ID(s) (default: "NA", for national) (see references for details)

A data frame with a row for each category and columns with the following variables describing the category:
categories.category*.categoryId,
categories.category*.name.

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

http://api.votesmart.org/docs/Votes.html
Use State.getStateIDs() to get a list of state 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 a list of categories
## Not run: categories <- Votes.getCategories(2012)
## Not run: categories