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.
Installing hansard
From CRAN
install.packages("hansard")From GitHub (Development Version)
install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("EvanOdell/hansard")Using 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.
tidy
tidy 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_style
The 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.
verbose
verbose 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_ prefixes
In 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.
Example using the commons_divisions() and
mp_vote_record() functions
The 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 × 5
## about title uin date_value date_datatype
## <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
## 1 685695 EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill C… CD:2… 2017-02-0… POSIXct
## 2 685768 EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill C… CD:2… 2017-02-0… POSIXct
## 3 685669 EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill: … CD:2… 2017-02-0… POSIXct
## 4 685670 EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill C… CD:2… 2017-02-0… POSIXct
## 5 685672 EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill C… CD:2… 2017-02-0… POSIXct
## 6 678297 Opposition Motion: Prisons CD:2… 2017-01-2… POSIXct
## 7 678341 Opposition Motion: School Funding CD:2… 2017-01-2… POSIXct
## 8 677700 Wales Bill: Lords Amendment 36 - Amdt … CD:2… 2017-01-2… POSIXct
## 9 671450 Opposition Motion: NHS and social care… CD:2… 2017-01-1… POSIXct
## 10 670447 Commonwealth Development Corporation B… CD:2… 2017-01-1… POSIXct
## 11 670448 Commonwealth Development Corporation B… CD:2… 2017-01-1… 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:
x <- commons_divisions(722300, verbose = FALSE)
head(x)## # A tibble: 6 × 7
## number member_party type member_printed_value vote_id about label_value
## <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
## 1 1 Labour aye_vote Ms Diane Abbott 722300 172 Biography i…
## 2 10 Labour aye_vote Dr Rosena Allin-Khan 722300 4573 Biography i…
## 3 100 Labour aye_vote Mary Creagh 722300 1579 Biography i…
## 4 101 Labour (Co-op) aye_vote Stella Creasy 722300 4088 Biography i…
## 5 102 Conservative aye_vote Tracey Crouch 722300 3950 Biography i…
## 6 103 Labour aye_vote Jon Cruddas 722300 1406 Biography i…With the summary parameter, we can return a brief
summary table of votes:
y <- commons_divisions(division_id = 722300, summary = TRUE, verbose = FALSE)
tibble::glimpse(y)## Rows: 1
## Columns: 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 Electio…
## $ 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.
Multiple Parameter Functions
The following functions accept vectors of member IDs and departmental names for applicable parameters:
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## Rows: 23
## Columns: 31
## $ about <chr> "705625", "705626", "705627", "678…
## $ answering_body <chr> "Department of Health", "Departmen…
## $ question_text <chr> "To ask the Secretary of State for…
## $ tabling_member_printed <chr> "Keith Vaz", "Keith Vaz", "Keith V…
## $ uin <chr> "65590", "65591", "65592", "61355"…
## $ attachment <list> [<data.frame[2 x 3]>], [<data.fra…
## $ grouped_question_uin <list> "list(c(\"65591\", \"65592\"))", …
## $ answer_text_value <chr> "<p>73 clinical commissioning grou…
## $ answering_member_about <chr> "4019", "4019", "4019", "4019", "4…
## $ answering_member_label_value <chr> "Biography information for Barones…
## $ answering_member_constituency_value <chr> "Oxford West and Abingdon", "Oxfor…
## $ answering_member_printed_value <chr> "Nicola Blackwood", "Nicola Blackw…
## $ date_of_answer_value <dttm> 2017-03-07, 2017-03-07, 2017-03-0…
## $ answer_date_time <dttm> 2017-03-07 17:15:39, 2017-03-07 1…
## $ date_of_answer_datatype <chr> "POXIXct", "POXIXct", "POXIXct", "…
## $ is_ministerial_correction_value <chr> "false", "false", "false", "false"…
## $ is_ministerial_correction_datatype <chr> "boolean", "boolean", "boolean", "…
## $ answering_dept_id_value <chr> "17", "17", "17", "17", "17", "17"…
## $ answering_dept_short_name_value <chr> "Health", "Health", "Health", "Hea…
## $ answering_dept_sort_name_value <chr> "Health", "Health", "Health", "Hea…
## $ date_value <chr> "2017-02-27", "2017-02-27", "2017-…
## $ date_datatype <chr> "dateTime", "dateTime", "dateTime"…
## $ hansard_heading_value <chr> "Diabetes", "Diabetes", "Diabetes"…
## $ house_id_value <chr> "1", "1", "1", "1", "1", "1", "1",…
## $ registered_interest_value <chr> "false", "false", "false", "false"…
## $ registered_interest_datatype <chr> "boolean", "boolean", "boolean", "…
## $ tabling_member_about <chr> "338", "338", "338", "338", "338",…
## $ tabling_member_label_value <chr> "Biography information for Keith V…
## $ tabling_member_constituency_value <chr> "Leicester East", "Leicester East"…
## $ legislature_pref_label_value <chr> "House of Commons", "House of Comm…
## $ legislature_about <chr> "25259", "25259", "25259", "25259"…Special functions
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 theresearch_briefings_listsfunction.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.
The research_briefings() function
The research_briefings() function includes the feature
of requesting data using lists created using the
research_briefings_lists functions:
research_topics_list <- research_topics_list()
research_topics_list[[7]]## [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.
The hansard_generic() function
The 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.
x <- hansard_generic("commonsansweredquestions.json")Note that the API defaults to returning 10 items per page, but allows
up to 500 items per page, the default used by hansard.