R/Office.getOfficesByBranchLevel.R

In umatter/pvsR: Interact with the Project Vote Smart API for Scientific Research

##' Get offices tracked according to branch and level
##' 
##' This function is a wrapper for the Office.getOfficesByBranchLevel() method of the PVS API Office class which grabs a list of offices Project Vote Smart keeps track of according to government branch and level. The function sends a request with this method to the PVS API for all branch and level 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 Office.getOfficesByBranchLevel(branchId, levelId)
##' @param branchId a character string or list of character strings with the branch ID(s) (see references for details)
##' @param levelId a character string or list of character strings with the level ID(s) (see references for details)
##' @return A data frame with a row for each office and columns with the following variables describing the office:\cr offices.office*.officeId,\cr offices.office*.officeTypeId,\cr offices.office*.officeLevelId,\cr offices.office*.officeBranchId,\cr offices.office*.name,\cr offices.office*.title,\cr offices.office*.shortTitle.
##' @references http://api.votesmart.org/docs/Office.html\cr
##' Use Office.getBranches() to get branch ID(s).\cr
##' Use Office.getLevels() to get level ID(s).\cr
##' 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
##' @author Ulrich Matter <ulrich.matter-at-unibas.ch>
##' @examples
##' # First, make sure your personal PVS API key is saved as an option
##' # (options("pvs.key" = "yourkey")) or in the pvs.key variable:
##' \dontrun{pvs.key <- "yourkey"}
##' # get offices tracked for all branch and level IDs
##' \dontrun{offices <- Office.getOfficesByBranchLevel(list("E","L","J"),list("F","S","L"))}
##' \dontrun{head(offices)}
##' @export


Office.getOfficesByBranchLevel <-
	function (branchId, levelId) {

		# internal function
		Office.getOfficesByBranchLevel.basic <- 
			function (.branchId, .levelId) {
				
				request <-  "Office.getOfficesByBranchLevel?"
				inputs  <-  paste("&branchId=",.branchId,"&levelId=",.levelId,sep="")
				output  <-  pvsRequest4(request,inputs)
				
				return(output)
		}

		# Main function  
		output.list <- lapply(branchId, FUN= function (y) {
			lapply(levelId, FUN= function (s) {
				Office.getOfficesByBranchLevel.basic(.branchId=y, .levelId=s)
			}
			)
		}
		)
		
		output.list <- redlist(output.list)
		output <- bind_rows(output.list)

		return(output)
	}