R/Votes.getBillAction.R

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

##' Get detailed action information on a certain stage of the bill
##' 
##' This function is a wrapper for the Votes.getBillAction() method of the PVS API Votes class which grabs detailed action information on a certain stage of the bill. The function sends a request with this method to the PVS API for all action 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 Votes.getBillAction(actionId)
##' @param actionId a character string or list of character strings with the action ID(s) (see references for details)
##' @return A data frame with a row for each action and columns with the following variables describing the action:\cr action.billId,\cr action.billNumber,\cr action.actionId,\cr action.category,\cr action.categoryId,\cr action.type,\cr action.stateId,\cr action.level,\cr action.stage,\cr action.outcome,\cr action.rollNumber,\cr action.yea,\cr action.nay,\cr action.voiceVote,\cr action.title,\cr action.officialTitle,\cr action.highlight,\cr action.synopsis,\cr action.officialSynopsis,\cr action.note.
##' @references http://api.votesmart.org/docs/Votes.html\cr
##' Use Votes.getBill() or Votes.getByOfficial() to get a list of action IDs.\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 information about certain actions
##' \dontrun{actioninfo <- Votes.getBillAction(actionId=list(2575,18436,10194))}
##' \dontrun{actioninfo}

##' @export


Votes.getBillAction <-
	function (actionId) {

		# internal function
		Votes.getBillAction.basic <- 
			function (.actionId) {
				
				request <-  "Votes.getBillAction?"
				inputs  <-  paste("&actionId=",.actionId, sep="")
				output  <-  pvsRequest(request,inputs)
				output$actionId <- .actionId
				
				return(output)
			}

		
		# Main function  
		output.list <- lapply(actionId, FUN= function (b) {
			Votes.getBillAction.basic(.actionId=b)
		}
		)
		
		output.list2 <- lapply(output.list, FUN=function (x){
			varnames <- names(x) 
			varnames.clean <- gsub(pattern=".text", replacement="", x=varnames, fixed=TRUE)
			names(x) <- varnames.clean
			x
		})
		
		output <- bind_rows(redlist(output.list2))
		return(output)
	}