members_search() now allows custom lucene queries, with or without wildcards.
Changed default value of verbose parameter to TRUE.
Adapted members() to fit follow changes in API structure.
Remove URL from about column from all_answered_questions if tidy=TRUE.
Fixed error in members_search() that produced a 404 error if left empty.
Expanded test coverage
Fixed bugs where capitalised conjunctions in department names were causing queries to fail.
bill_publications() function introduced, to retrieve data on publications associated with different bills.
Transitioned from if and else statements to dplyr’s case_when() and if_else() functions for internal use. Also replacing gsub() with faster stringi functions in some cases. These changes are intended to increase speed and improve ease of maintenance.
Internal rewrites to make maintenance easier and produce a few very small increases in speed in several functions.
Fixed some typos in documentation, brought documentation into line with the recommended 80 character maximum width for each line.
Fixed bug on constituencies() so that the NULL default value of parameter current works properly.
lords_attendance() has been deprecated. Please use lords_attendance_date() for attendance data for a given date, and lords_attendance_session() for attendance from a given session ID. (#4, @pssguy)
New function lords_sessions() returns a tibble with details of all sessions in the House of Lords between two given dates.
commons_oral_question_times() now only returns one question ID.
Tidying with commons_divisions() now separates vote number from division ID, and the function no longer returns two rows to summarise a division when only one is needed.
Changes to syntax for constituencies(). The current parameter can now distinguish between current constituencies (TRUE), former (FALSE) and all constituencies (NULL).
Simplification of some internal code, which may have a marginal effect on speed, and will make maintenance and adding features easier going forward.
Switch from using stringr to stringi for internal string processing.
sessions_info() is now faster.
Speeding up of some tests.
Better tidying on lords_interests().
Changes to structure of lord_vote_record() to make it slightly faster and more consistent with other functions.
all_answered_questions(), commons_answered_questions(), commons_oral_questions(), commons_written_questions(), lords_written_questions() now accept arrays of member IDs and department names.
Added verbose parameter to all functions. If verbose=TRUE, messages displaying the progress of the API call are sent to the console.
Sped up edm details retrieval in mp_edms() where full_data==TRUE and there are multiple MP IDs.
Major increase in speed for constituencies(current=TRUE).
Small increase in speed for all functions.
all_answered_questions() can now handle departmental ID numbers passed as characters.
Now uses the stringr package to remove case sensitivity from queries.
Fixed bug that prevented lords_written_questions() from retrieving more than 500 results at a time.
mp_edms() now accepts lists and character vectors of MP IDs, and returns them all in one tibble.
mp_edms() now includes start_date and end_date parameters
Fixed mp_edms() to return more useful error if the requested MP does not have any Early Day Motions that meet the search parameters.
The signatory parameter in mp_edms() is now behaving properly.
General improvement to documentation
All functions have a wrapper function with the same name, but with hansard_ prefixed. Existing names have remained untouched.
Addition of house and answering_body parameters to all_answered_questions() function.
Fixed bug in lord_vote_record() which produced an error if requesting both lobbies, but a peer had only voted in one of the lobbies.
Party name columns in election_candidates() and election_results(all_data=TRUE) are now in alphabetical order.
Fixed bug in all_answered_questions() that wasn’t returning results when tabling_mp_id is a parameter.
lords_interests() and bill_stage_types() seperated from members and bills, respectively, into their own distinct functions.
New all_data parameter in election_results() to return the number of votes cast for each party in each constituency.
New election_candidates() function, which returns the name of all candidates standing in an election.
New epetition_tibble() function, which returns a tibble with all epetitions submitted to parliament, subject to parameters. This function offers more flexibility for returning basic details about a group of epetitions than the existing epetition() function, which is designed to provide more detailed information on a single epetition.
Additional URL stripping from variable values if tidy=TRUE.
Added tabling_mp_id parameter to all_answered_questions().
Fixed bug in members() where looking up a single member returned a tibble with two rows.
Fixed bug in mp_edms() where additional data was not being returned if full_data=TRUE.
Fixed bug in election_results() where it did not return data if constit_details=TRUE.
Fixed bugs where empty queries in election_results(), members() and possibly other functions were returning incorrect errors in some environments or circumstances.
Added optional tidy_style parameter, allowing users to decide which style of “snake_case”, “camelCase” and “period.case” they want variable names to be in, if tidy=TRUE.
The elections() function now accepts start_date and end_date parameters. As the API called by the elections() function only accepts one additional argument not included in the package (the label of the election), changed the extra_args parameter to label to query that argument.
The tidy parameter now changes date values to POSIXct class with as.POSIXct() when the API returns date information, or to POSIXct with the parse_date_time from the lubridate package where the API returns both date and time information.
tidy parameter now strips out more unneeded character strings from API response.
Updated elections() to work with new API syntax.
hansard() functions with start_date and end_date parameters now accept any input that can be coerced to a date with the as.Date() function.
Added a type parameter to elections(), to return all elections of a particular type.
Added optional constit_details parameter to election_result() function. If TRUE, constit_details retrieves additional constituency details from constituencies(), most notably including GSS code.
Fixed bug on commons_oral_question_times() where some calls did not return tibbles.
Fixed bug in lords_divisons() that did prevented vote summary queries from being returned.
Removed superfluous x from names in elections() when tidy=TRUE.
Added optional calculate_percent parameter to election_result() function. If TRUE, calculate_percent calculates the turnout percentage for each constituency in the tibble and the majority of the winning candidate to one decimal place, and includes this information in the tibble in columns labelled turnout_percentage and majority_percentage. Defaults to FALSE.
hansard() now uses tibbles instead of data frames as the data class returned from API calls.
Fixes discrepency between output displayed and vignette and actual package output (#7, @pssguy).
tidy parameter in members_search() now does some additional tidying up.
Major re-write, breaks compatibility with previous versions, please check your code to ensure it still works with the new package, as console input functionality has been removed from all functions. These changes ensure greater consistency insyntax across the package, in both the body and formals of the functions.
If you need the old console based functions, they can be accessed through the hansardconsole package at https://github.com/EvanOdell/hansard-console.
Changes have been made to most functions, including:
all_answered_questions(): Console interface is gone, now operates as a function with the ID for a given MP accepted as the only function parameter. Returns all answered questions if blank.
bills(): Rewritten, now with the ability to look up bills by ID, as well as bill amendments. Added bill_stage_types() function.
commons_answered_questions(): Changed parameter name answeredBy to answered_by; improved ability to search by date, dropped console inputs.
commons_divisions(): Removed console inputs, simplified options.
commons_oral_question_times(): Simplified function, removed need for console input.
commons_oral_questions(): Simpler process, same result, more flexibility in requests
commons_answered_questions(): Removed need for console input.
commons_terms(): Simplified formals.
commons_written_questions(): Removed need for console input.
constituencies(): Simplified formals.
early_day_motions(): Changed all camelCase to snake_case.
election_results(): Removed console input, simplified formals.
elections(): Removed console input, simplified formals.
lords_attendance(): Removed console input, simplified formals.
lord_vote_record(): Removed console input, simplified formals.
lords_divisions(): Removed console input, simplified formals.
members(): Added additional commons_members(), commons_interests(), lords_members() and lords_interests() functions.
mp_edms(): Improved functionality, can now call full text of early day motions.
mp_questions(): Changed questionType to question_type
mp_vote_record(): Minor re-write
papers_laid(): Incorporates new features in the API
publication_logs(): Minor re-write, now includes start and end dates.
sessions_info(): Added start_date() and end_date() parameters
tv_channels() New function.
tv_clips(): New function, previously part of tv_programmes.
tv_programmes(): Minor re-write, now includes ability to select legislature.
Adding of research_briefings_lists() functions.
The lords_attendance() function was not working. It was returning empty data frames when searching by date and failing entirely when trying to retrieve all attendance. This was due to url encoding issues, which have now been identified and fixed. (#4, @meenaparam)
Fixed spelling of amendments, so that lords_ammendments() is now lords_amendments(). The lords_ammendments() function has been deprecated, and will be removed in a future release.
In response to a request, I’ve added three new functions that allow you to request the voting record of both MPs and members of the House of Lords by using their ID as a function parameter, rather than as a console input. They are:
lords_vote_record()
The option to use console input has been preserved in commons_divisions(), lords_divisions(), commons_written_questions() and commons_oral_questions(), along with other features not available in the new functions.
This update fixes an issue with lords_written_questions() and commons_written_questions() where the functions returned a 404 error on some requests.
Provides functions to download data from the data.parliament.uk APIs.
Because of the structure of the data.parliament.uk API, there is a named function for each type of available data for ease of use. Functions for each new API will be added as and when they become available on data.parliament.uk. See the package documentation for details on each function and the type of data available.