hansard is an R package to pull data from the UK parliament through the http://www.data.parliament.uk/ API. It emphasises simplicity and ease of use, so that users unfamiliar with APIs can easily retrieve large volumes of high quality data. Each function accepts a single argument at a time, and functions that require additional information to retrieve the data you requested will ask for it after you execute the function. Functions retrieve data in json format and convert it to a tibble. The hansard_generic function supports the building of API requests for XML, csv or HTML formats if required. Note that the API is rate limited to returning 5500 rows per request in some circumstances.
install.packages("hansard")install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("EvanOdell/hansard")library(hansard)hansard contains functions for calling data for the UK Parliament API. The functions are designed to call data from a specific http://www.data.parliament.uk/ API. The parameter options for each function vary, depending on the specific information available from each API, but there are four constant parameters in every function (with the exception of the hansard_generic() and research_topics_list() functions described below): extra_args, tidy, tidy_style and verbose.
tidytidy is a logical parameter accepting either TRUE or FALSE, defaulting to TRUE. If TRUE, hansard will fix variable names, which by default contain non alpha-numeric characters and appear to use an inconsistent/idiosyncratic naming convention, at least by the standards of the various naming conventions used in R. Dates and datetimes are converted to POSIXct class. Some extra URL data included in the API is also stripped out.
tidy_styleThe naming convention for variables used if tidy==TRUE is indicated by tidy_style. tidy_style accepts one of "snake_case", "camelCase" and "period.case", defaulting to "snake_case". All variable names will be converted to match the given naming convention.
verboseverbose is a logical parameter accepting either TRUE or FALSE, defaulting to FALSE. If TRUE, the function will print the progress of the API query to the console.
hansard_ prefixesIn addition to the more generic sounding function names, each function in hansard has a wrapper where the name is prefixed with hansard_. For example, both bills() and hansard_bills() will return the same result.
Almost all hansard functions (the exceptions being the functions that retrieve more reference style data: bill_stage_types(), commons_division_date(), commons_terms() constituencies(), election_candidates(), election_results(), members(), members_search(), research_briefings_lists() and hansard_generic()) include a start_date and end_date parameter, which can be used to set the earliest (start_date) and latest (end_date) data to be returned from the API.
commons_divisions() and mp_vote_record() functionsThe commons_divisions() function returns divisions in the House of Commons, including the result of votes and information on what we being voted on. mp_vote_record() returns a data frame the voting record of a given MP on each division they voted in. The example below returns all Commons Divisions where Diane Abbott voted aye in 2017. To find the parliamentary ID of Diane Abbott (or any other member of the House of Commons or House of Lords), use the members_search() function described below.
library(hansard)
z <- mp_vote_record(172, "aye", start_date = "2017-01-01",
end_date = "2017-02-07", verbose = FALSE)
z## # A tibble: 11 x 5
## about title uin date_value date_datatype
## <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
## 1 685695 EU (Notification of Withdraw~ CD:2017-~ 2017-02-07~ POSIXct
## 2 685768 EU (Notification of Withdraw~ CD:2017-~ 2017-02-07~ POSIXct
## 3 685669 EU (Notification of Withdraw~ CD:2017-~ 2017-02-06~ POSIXct
## 4 685670 EU (Notification of Withdraw~ CD:2017-~ 2017-02-06~ POSIXct
## 5 685672 EU (Notification of Withdraw~ CD:2017-~ 2017-02-06~ POSIXct
## 6 678297 Opposition Motion: Prisons CD:2017-~ 2017-01-25~ POSIXct
## 7 678341 Opposition Motion: School Fu~ CD:2017-~ 2017-01-25~ POSIXct
## 8 677700 Wales Bill: Lords Amendment ~ CD:2017-~ 2017-01-24~ POSIXct
## 9 671450 Opposition Motion: NHS and s~ CD:2017-~ 2017-01-11~ POSIXct
## 10 670447 Commonwealth Development Cor~ CD:2017-~ 2017-01-10~ POSIXct
## 11 670448 Commonwealth Development Cor~ CD:2017-~ 2017-01-10~ POSIXctUsing commons_divisions(), we can see the result of one of those votes, ID 722300, the Early Parliamentary General Election bill that dissolved parliament for the 2017 General Election. The function default is to return a list of every MP and how they voted:
## # A tibble: 6 x 7
## number member_party type member_printed_~ vote_id about label_value
## <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
## 1 1 Labour aye_v~ Ms Diane Abbott 722300 172 Biography inf~
## 2 10 Labour aye_v~ Dr Rosena Allin~ 722300 4573 Biography inf~
## 3 100 Labour aye_v~ Mary Creagh 722300 1579 Biography inf~
## 4 101 Labour (Co-o~ aye_v~ Stella Creasy 722300 4088 Biography inf~
## 5 102 Conservative aye_v~ Tracey Crouch 722300 3950 Biography inf~
## 6 103 Labour aye_v~ Jon Cruddas 722300 1406 Biography inf~With the summary parameter, we can return a brief summary table of votes:
## Observations: 1
## Variables: 13
## $ abstain_count <chr> "0"
## $ ayes_count <chr> "522"
## $ noes_vote_count <chr> "13"
## $ did_not_vote_count <chr> "0"
## $ error_vote_count <chr> "0"
## $ non_eligible_count <chr> "0"
## $ suspended_or_expelled_votes_count <chr> "0"
## $ margin <chr> "509"
## $ date <dttm> 2017-04-19
## $ division_number <chr> "196"
## $ session <chr> "2016/17"
## $ title <chr> "Early Parliamentary General...
## $ uin <chr> "CD:2017-04-19:264"The results of votes in the House of Lords can be retrieved with the lords_divisions function. The voting record of individual Lords can be retrieved using the lords_vote_record functions.
The following functions accept vectors of member IDs and departmental names for applicable parameters:
all_answered_questions()
commons_answered_questions()
commons_oral_questions()
commons_written_questions()
lords_written_questions()
mp_edms()
For example, the following function returns all questions answered by Nichola Blackwood (4019) or Sam Gyimah (3980), asked by Keith Vaz (338) or Diane Abbot (172), and covered by the Department for Health or the Ministry of Justice, between 2016-12-18 and 2017-03-12.
w <- all_answered_questions(mp_id = c(4019, 3980), tabling_mp_id = c(338, 172),
answering_body = c("health", "justice"),
start_date = "2016-12-18", end_date = "2017-03-12")
tibble::glimpse(w) ## need to fix this## Observations: 23
## Variables: 31
## $ about <chr> "705625", "705626", "70562...
## $ answering_body <chr> "Department of Health", "D...
## $ question_text <chr> "To ask the Secretary of S...
## $ tabling_member_printed <chr> "Keith Vaz", "Keith Vaz", ...
## $ uin <chr> "65590", "65591", "65592",...
## $ attachment <list> [<data.frame[2 x 3]>, <da...
## $ grouped_question_uin <list> ["list(c(\"65591\", \"655...
## $ answer_text_value <chr> "<p>73 clinical commission...
## $ answering_member_about <chr> "4019", "4019", "4019", "4...
## $ answering_member_label_value <chr> "Biography information for...
## $ answering_member_constituency_value <chr> "Oxford West and Abingdon"...
## $ answering_member_printed_value <chr> "Nicola Blackwood", "Nicol...
## $ date_of_answer_value <dttm> 2017-03-07, 2017-03-07, 2...
## $ answer_date_time <dttm> 2017-03-07 17:15:39, 2017...
## $ date_of_answer_datatype <chr> "POXIXct", "POXIXct", "POX...
## $ is_ministerial_correction_value <chr> "false", "false", "false",...
## $ is_ministerial_correction_datatype <chr> "boolean", "boolean", "boo...
## $ answering_dept_id_value <chr> "17", "17", "17", "17", "1...
## $ answering_dept_short_name_value <chr> "Health", "Health", "Healt...
## $ answering_dept_sort_name_value <chr> "Health", "Health", "Healt...
## $ date_value <chr> "2017-02-27", "2017-02-27"...
## $ date_datatype <chr> "dateTime", "dateTime", "d...
## $ hansard_heading_value <chr> "Diabetes", "Diabetes", "D...
## $ house_id_value <chr> "1", "1", "1", "1", "1", "...
## $ registered_interest_value <chr> "false", "false", "false",...
## $ registered_interest_datatype <chr> "boolean", "boolean", "boo...
## $ tabling_member_about <chr> "338", "338", "338", "338"...
## $ tabling_member_label_value <chr> "Biography information for...
## $ tabling_member_constituency_value <chr> "Leicester East", "Leicest...
## $ legislature_pref_label_value <chr> "House of Commons", "House...
## $ legislature_about <chr> "25259", "25259", "25259",...Several functions have special or experimental features:
research_briefings_lists() An experimental feature that creates lists of possible parameters, and allows the user to call to the API based on the content of the list. Currently only available with the research_briefings_lists function.
hansard_generic() A basic wrapper function for any of the available APIs. Users must specify the exact path they want the function to call from, and must also specify JSON formatting.
members_search() A search function for members of the House of Commons and House of Lords.
research_briefings() functionThe research_briefings() function includes the feature of requesting data using lists created using the research_briefings_lists functions:
## [1] "Defence"In this case I have given them the same name as their function, but you can assign any name you wish to them.
Having created the lists, they can be used to specify which topics and subtopics to call, although strings can also be used. In the example below, a and c contain the same data.
a <- research_briefings(topic = research_topics_list[[7]])
c <- research_briefings(topic = "Defence")If a specific subtopic is called, but the topic is not specified, the function will still return all data within that specific subtopic. Note that this is slower than specifying the topic and subtopic.
If a specified subtopic is not a subtopic of the specified topic, the function will not return any data.
hansard_generic() functionThe hansard_generic() function allows you to put in your own paths to the API. Information on all the paths available in the API can be found on the DDP Explorer website.
Note that the API defaults to returning 10 items per page, but allows up to 500 items per page, the default used by hansard.