Ecfun (version 0.2-0)

readUSsenate: Read the list of elected officials in the United States Senate

Description

Read the list of elected officials in the United States Senate.

Usage

readUSsenate(url.=
"https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.xml",
    stateAbbreviations=Ecdat::USstateAbbreviations,
    fixNonStandard=subNonStandardNames, ...)

Arguments

url.

Universal resource locator to be read and processed to obtain the desired list. (The current default was suggested by Julia Silge.)

stateAbbreviations

a data.frame giving names and alternative codes for US states and territories. This must have a column named "Name" giving the names of all 50 states as they appear on the url and another whose name includes "USPS" giving the correspoding 2-letter codes.

fixNonStandard

function to look for and repair nonstandard names such as names containing characters with accent marks that are sometimes mangled by different software.

…

optional arguments passed to fixNonStandard

Value

readUSsenate returns a data.frame with the following columns:

State

A factor identifying the state the person represents

state

A factor giving the 2-letter USPS code for the state represented

Class

an integer = 1, 2, or 3 for election in the 6-year cycle including 2008, 2010, or 2012, respectively.

Name

A character vector giving the name of each representative (in surname, given name format)

party

a factor identifying the party affiliation of each representative ("D", "R", "I" or ...)

address

character vector of physical addresses of offices in Washington, DC.

phone

character vector the phone number of the offices in Washington, DC.

email

a character vector giving the URL of their office contact form.

website

a character vector giving the URL of their web site in "senate.gov".

surname

character vector giving the surname of each representative

givenName

given name of each representative (possibly with middle name or initial, a nickname, and a suffix like "Jr.")

leadership_position

a character vector giving the names of the official leaders or blank.

Details

1. Senate <- readHTMLTable(url)

2. Use camelParse to remove duplication in Name.

3. Look for and fix surname and givenName with nonstandard characters using fixNonStandard.

See Also

getURL readHTMLTable camelParse to remove duplication in Name readUShouse UShouse.senate parseName subNonStandardNames

Examples

# NOT RUN {
if(!fda::CRAN()){
USsenate <- readUSsenate()
}
# }