R/Votes.getBillsByOfficialYearOffice.R

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

##' Get a list of bills according to office (optional), candidate and year
##' 
##' This function is a wrapper for the Votes.getBillsByOfficialYearOffice() method of the PVS API Votes class which grabs a list of bills that fit the candidate and year. The function sends a request with this method to the PVS API for all years, candidate and office 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.getBillsByOfficialYearOffice(year, candidateId, officeId=NULL)
##' @param year a character string or list of character strings with the year ID(s)
##' @param candidateId a character string or list of character strings with the candidate ID(s) (see references for details)
##' @param officeId (optional) a character string or list of character strings with the office ID(s) (default: all) (see references for details)
##' @return A data frame with a row for each bill and columns with the following variables describing the bill:\cr bills.bill*.billId,\cr bills.bill*.billNumber,\cr bills.bill*.title,\cr bills.bill*.type.
##' @references http://api.votesmart.org/docs/Votes.html\cr
##' Use Candidates.getByOfficeState(), Candidates.getByOfficeTypeState(), Candidates.getByLastname(), Candidates.getByLevenshtein(), Candidates.getByElection(), Candidates.getByDistrict() or Candidates.getByZip() to get a list of candidate IDs.\cr
##' See http://api.votesmart.org/docs/semi-static.html for a list of office IDs or use Office.getOfficesByType(), Office.getOfficesByLevel(), Office.getOfficesByTypeLevel() or Office.getOfficesByBranchLevel\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 a list of bills for a certain office, candidate and year 
##' \dontrun{bills <- Votes.getBillsByOfficialYearOffice(list(2010,2011,2012),107800,)}
##' \dontrun{bills}
##' @export



Votes.getBillsByOfficialYearOffice <-
	function (year, candidateId, officeId=NULL) {
		
		if (length(officeId)==0) {
			# internal function
			Votes.getBillsByOfficialYearOffice.basic1 <- 
				function (.year, .candidateId) {

					request <-  "Votes.getBillsByOfficialYearOffice?"
					inputs  <-  paste("&year=",.year,"&candidateId=",.candidateId,sep="")
					output  <-  pvsRequest(request,inputs)
					output$year <- .year
					output$candidateId <- .candidateId
					
					return(output)
				}
			
			
			# Main function  
			output.list <- lapply(year, FUN= function (y) {
				lapply(candidateId, FUN= function (s) {
					Votes.getBillsByOfficialYearOffice.basic1(.year=y, .candidateId=s)
				}
				)
			}
			)
			output.list <- redlist(output.list)
			output <- bind_rows(output.list)

		} else {
			
			# internal function
			Votes.getBillsByOfficialYearOffice.basic2 <- 
				function (.year, .candidateId, .officeId) {

					request <-  "Votes.getBillsByOfficialYearOffice?"
					inputs  <-  paste("&year=",.year,"&candidateId=",.candidateId, "&officeId=", .officeId, sep="")
					output  <-  pvsRequest(request,inputs)
					output$year <- .year
					output$candidateId <- .candidateId
					output$officeId.input <- .officeId
					
					return(output)
				}

			# Main function  
			output.list <- lapply(year, FUN= function (y) {
				lapply(candidateId, FUN= function (s) {
					lapply(officeId, FUN= function (c) {
						Votes.getBillsByOfficialYearOffice.basic2(.year=y, .candidateId=s, .officeId=c)
					}
					)
				}
				)
			}
			)

			output.list <- redlist(output.list)
			output <- bind_rows(output.list)
			
			# Avoids that output is missleading, because officeId is already given in request-output, but also a
			# additionally generated (as officeId.input). Problem exists because some request-outputs might be empty
			# and therefore only contain one "officeId" whereas the non-empty ones contain two. (see basic function)
			output$officeId[c(as.vector(is.na(output$officeId)))] <- output$officeId.input[as.vector(is.na(output$officeId))]
			output$officeId.input <- NULL
		}
		return(output)
	}