Transparency

I started an R package a while back, and a few people have shown interest, so I thought it was time to revist the code. govdat is an interface to various APIs for government data: currently the Sunlight Labs APIs, and the New York Times congress API. Returned objects from functions are simple lists. In future versions of govdat, I may change how data is returned. The following are examples (which is also the package vignette) of using the Sunlight Labs API. I will add examples of using the New York Times Congress API once their site is up again; I’m doing this on 2013-08-28, just after the takedown of their site. ...

I created an R package a while back to interact with some APIs that serve up data on what our elected represenatives are up to, including the New York Times Congress API, and the Sunlight Labs API. What kinds of things can you do with govdat? Here are a few examples. How do the two major parties differ in the use of certain words (searches the congressional record using the Sunlight Labs Capitol Words API)? ...